


invested

by starlightkun



Category: NCT (Band), NCT Dream, WAYV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love Triangles, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, depending on how u define happy ending lmao, mostly angst but theres still some fluff in there i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26562133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightkun/pseuds/starlightkun
Summary: in which you’re convinced that you don’t have a tattoo, and that you’re in love with lee donghyuck
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Reader, Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40





	invested

Soulmates are bullshit.

The idea of having that _one_ person that is _perfect_ for you and was made _just for you_ was complete and utter _bullshit_.

Love should be a choice, a struggle, it shouldn’t be something so easy.

Maybe your philosophy on it was a bit biased, seeing as how you were never born with an indicator.

You didn’t have a small bunny on your wrist like your friend and his soulmate.

You didn’t have a huge orange chrysanthemum blossoming across your shoulder like your parents.

You had nothing. No tattoo to tie you to anyone.

It used to hurt, to pain you to think that you didn’t have a soulmate out there, that you would never have someone you truly loved or who would truly love you. But then you started to realize that it didn’t matter if you had a soulmate. It was actually freedom, not belonging to anyone or having that choice made for you. You could _choose_ who you fell in love with and who you wanted to give your heart to. Not the universe or some supernatural force.

You’d met Lee Donghyuck in the most mundane way, a mutual friend had set you up with him. He didn’t have a tattoo either, she had informed you over dinner one night as her own soulmate had her arm around her. She reckoned that you two could at least be friends since you “shared the same struggle,” according to her. And you, having never met someone else without a tattoo, were at the least intrigued.

And it really did all take off from there. Your whole first meeting was spent with the two of you just rambling on about your own experiences growing up without an indicator. You didn’t quite click the way that you figured soulmates would, but you were pretty sure it felt really damn close.

That was your last year of college that you’d met him. Now, just over four years later, you’d both graduated and found careers, and were in love. Real, true, raw love.

So when you woke up beside him in bed that morning, rolling over to rest your forehead against his back and sling an arm over his waist, you didn’t think twice about it. And when he playfully grumbled and rolled over to “obliviously” squish you underneath him, you didn’t think twice about it. And when you made breakfast that morning and he nearly made you burn it because he had been kissing you for so long, you didn’t think twice about it. And especially when you kissed him goodbye at the bus station—where you two had to board separate buses—you didn’t think twice about it.

In fact, your mind was preoccupied with your plans for your date tonight. You were going to the movies, something the two of you hadn’t done in forever. And so far, you still haven’t agreed on what movie to watch. That was something you could research on your morning commute. Reading through the reviews and summaries of the newest releases, you sent screenshots of a couple you wanted to see to Donghyuck.

[hyuck: i heard that one sucked]

[you: which one?]

[hyuck: the first one]

[you: that’s the point, ding dong. you go watch it to make fun of it]

[hyuck: ding dong?]

[hyuck: am i dating a three-year-old?]

[you: you have rubber duckies don’t even try to call me immature]

[hyuck: uh yeah, because they’re really fucking cute!!]

[hyuck: there’s nothing cute about calling someone a ding dong]

[you: but the person i’m calling a ding dong is cute]

[hyuck: blocked. reported.]

[you: for what?]

[hyuck: attempted murder]

[you: i’m sorry, wHAT]

[hyuck: my heart is too weak for you to randomly call me cute, i nearly had a deadly heart attack]

[you: you’re so dramatic i hate you]

[hyuck: that’s better]

It was then that your bus squealed to a stop at the location on the route closest to your work. Pocketing your phone, you quickly grabbed your bag to shuffle off the bus with many of the other people who worked in the same district as you. Even though the bustling crowds held new, unfamiliar faces each day, there was still some kind of familiarity of the busy sidewalks and people hurrying to get to work on time. Looking at your watch, you were happily surprised to see that you had enough time to grab a cup of coffee before checking in. Not only had your boyfriend’s unexpected morning makeout session nearly burnt your food, but it also made you forget to start the coffee maker, leaving the both of you _severely_ decaffeinated.

As you waited for them to make your order—which you had kept rather simple for time’s sake—your phone buzzed again. It was Donghyuck, he had sent a screenshot of his own choice for movie night.

[hyuck: this one?]

[you: sure, see you after work]

[hyuck: i love you]

[you: love you, ding dong]

“Y/N! Your order’s ready!” The barista called out, and you quickly grabbed your coffee and thanked them before leaving.

Reemerging onto the busy streets, you were only a block away from your office building.

At work, you had just settled down at your desk when you were called for a meeting by your boss. Hanging up the phone, you started gathering the folders you knew you’d need before you rushed towards the elevator. You were halfway there, looking down to make sure the precariously stacked files weren’t going to fall. And it was then that you slammed into the back of a large body, almost sending you toppling to the ground. Thankfully you were still up, and your papers were okay. However, your mostly full coffee was not. A good portion of it was all down your front, the cup now rolling on the floor.

Not even looking at who you bumped into, you cursed under your breath before grabbing the cup, chugging the rest of the coffee, and tossing it in a nearby garbage can. As you inspected the mess on your shirt, the man you’d collided with finally spoke up.

“Oh, I am so sorry. Here, you can take my jacket.” His deep voice offered as he went to take off said suit jacket. The man was tall, and not a familiar face to you. But definitely a handsome face at that.

You stopped him with a wave of your hand, “It’s fine, thank you. I have an extra blazer at my desk.”

And with that, you left the man, speedwalking back to your desk. Rifling through your desk drawers, you finally found the one that had your emergency clothes supply. You took a moment to smile at the picture on your desk. It was of you and Donghyuck on your third anniversary. Standing at the overlook of a mountain you had hiked together, his arms around your waist, and a satisfied grin on his face while you were in the middle of cackling because he had tickled your side right as the picture was being taken. Then you threw on your blazer and hurried back to the elevator.

The meeting was on the fourteenth floor with the Budgeting Department. N-City Marketing Company owned four floors of the building you were in. Thirteen was for your department, Advertising; fourteen was for Budgeting; fifteen was for Design; and sixteen was for all of the high-powered people such as the CEO, CFO, COO, Chairwoman, and the Board of Directors.

You bounced your leg impatiently as you stood in the elevator, more people getting on and getting off before the doors finally closed, and the room shuddered into motion. For fuck’s sake, you were only going one floor up, why did it have to take six minutes? That delightfully familiar and monotonous _bing!_ reached your ears, sounding like a message from God as you pushed your way to the front and off the stuffy elevator.

Knowing the way to the conference room well, you were already rehearsing your apology for your tardiness in your head. Your boss, Jo Haseul, had already spotted you through the clear walls of the conference room, eyeing you sternly as you pushed the doors open.

“I apologize for my tardiness, ma’am, I—”

“It was my fault,” A deep voice spoke up from almost the other end of the table from where you were looking, and you were shocked to be met by the face of the tall and handsome stranger you’d bumped into earlier. “I had forgotten my copy of the weekly stock report and asked Ms. Y/L/N if she maybe had another copy in her desk.”

Your eyebrows shot up at his smooth lie, definitely a better story to have told your boss than you spilled coffee on yourself. This almost completely absolved you of liability for your late arrival.

“And do you have one for him, Ms. Y/L/N?” Your boss questioned, drawing your attention back momentarily from the young man.

“Oh, uhm, yes.” You pulled one from the file folder on the top of the stack in your arms. This dude was lucky you actually had one, instead of giving you an imaginary and futile goose chase.

Handing it to the man, he thanked you, and you didn’t miss the flash of an identical paper at the top of the folder he had tucked it into. You took your seat beside one of your coworkers, Huang Renjun, hoping that not much had happened without you. After all, you were _at the most_ , four minutes late to the meeting. But judging by his notepad, you had somehow already missed a lot.

“Well, continuing on with the meeting, I’m handing the floor to Director Kim.” Director Jo gestured to the head of the Budgeting Department.

As Kim Doyoung got his presentation set up, you fervently scribbled down the most pertinent information from Renjun’s notes, hoping that you could get the rest when the full report from the meeting was written up. Which hopefully would be later today, if Park Jisung, the Budgeting intern, got to it. That poor boy had so much on his plate, you were amazed that he was able to work at N-City on a minimal paid internship, as well as finishing a Doctorate in economics. You weren’t quite sure what he was going to use it for, but that kid was smarter than he seemed. Except, you noticed that the new stranger was sitting beside Jisung, both discussing something as they took detailed notes of the meeting.

“Did Budgeting finally get another intern to keep Jisung’s sanity?” You leaned over to whisper into Renjun’s ear as Director Kim struggled with the projector.

“Kind of. That’s Director Kim’s new Assistant Director. Wong Yukhei, I think he said? I wasn’t really paying attention to anything he said after ‘I brought donuts for everyone.’” Renjun admitted, and at this, your interest had piqued.

“What happened to Assistant Director Nakamoto?”

“Depending on who you ask, he got fired for sexual harassment, or is working on a kind-of secret plan to open a Japanese branch of N-City.”

You snorted at the notion of Nakamoto Yuta being fired for sexual harassment. Sure, he would make the occasional quip sometimes, but he was everybody’s best friend, as well a hard worker who knew boundaries and when to be serious. Not to mention that he was your boyfriend’s childhood friend and had gotten you the internship—which then turned into your permanent career six months later—at N-City in the first place, but you tended not to bring that up in the workplace. Professionalism and all.

“He hasn’t mentioned anything about being fired, so I’m thinking it’s the second one.”

“Yeah, but nobody’s even seen him. Or Assistant Director Moon, by the way. That means that Director Jo is going to be looking for a new Assistant Director.” He nudged you in the side suggestively, and you shook your head.

“So, they’re probably on-site in Japan.” You sighed before addressing his second statement. “And no way would I even be considered. Jang Yeeun and Mark Lee both have at least two years of experience on me and are _much_ better at office politics than me.”

“But _you’re_ here, and they’re not.”

Before you could reply, the projector suddenly burst to life, nearly blinding Director Kim as he was standing directly in front of it. Holding back your laughter like the rest of the employees around the table, you took a sip of water to try to calm yourself down again. His new Assistant Director had been the one to fix the setup, and he towered over all of the sitting figures as he meandered back to his seat.

When Director Jo declared the meeting to be over nearly an hour later, you had to bite back your sigh of relief. The entire time you had been hyperaware of the stickiness on your chest. You’d only had time to throw on a blazer to hide the stain, you couldn’t do anything to clean up the shirt or the coffee itself. Following Renjun to the elevator, you bounced on your heels, letting the topics and ideas from the meeting mill around in your head for a while.

There was a sudden tap on your shoulder. Thinking that it was your boss reprimanding you for being late earlier, you turned around already with a shameful apology on your lips. Instead of the short yet stern figure of Director Jo, you had to crane your neck up to look at the much taller yet somehow less imposing figure of the new Assistant Director of Budgeting whom Renjun was _pretty sure_ was named Wong Yukhei.

“Oh, hello.” You greeted him with a polite business bow, gripping your papers a little tighter in your hands. “I want to thank you for earlier—”

“It really was my fault, it’s no problem.”

“I also want to ask how you knew my name, considering that I had never seen you before this morning.”

“Director Jo mentioned one of her employees, Ms. Y/L/N Y/N, was late. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the woman running in late to the meeting was you.” He replied with a slightly cocky smile, and you were sure that your knuckles were turning white with how tightly you were holding the papers.

Now that you could actually see him much better, and were properly talking to him, you were confused. Earlier he had seemed like some bumbling new intern or something, but through this whole conversation he was much cooler and more composed, every word and slight gesture planned and performed to be charming. You weren’t getting the best vibes from him so far.

“Ah.”

“I’m Wong Yukhei, by the way, the new Assistant Director of Budgeting. You were the only one in the meeting I hadn’t been able to introduce myself to yet.”

“Nice to meet you, Assistant Director Wong. I hope we can work well together.”

Assistant Director Wong tilted his head funnily when you had addressed him that way, eyes seemingly fixated on your hands for a moment before some kind of a lightbulb moment came to him. “Today, the other Assistant Directors and I are taking all of our interns out for lunch. You should join us.”

At this, you narrowed your eyes slightly, unsure of his motives, “I’m not an intern.”

“I know, Jisung told me that your intern is uh, Zhong Chenle, right?”

“Yes. And I’m also not an Assistant Director.”

“ _Yet_ , from what I’ve heard.”

The elevator dinged, muting your scoff at what you were pretty sure were poorly-concealed advances on you. As people disembarked, you started walking away from the man, saying with a pointed tone, “I wouldn’t be able to anyway. I’m afraid that I have to spend most of my lunch break running home to change my shirt and running back with just enough time to stuff half a sandwich from the cafeteria in my face before returning to my desk.”

And with that, you stepped onto the elevator after Renjun, confidently pressing the button to close the doors and never breaking eye contact with Assistant Director Wong until he was out of your sight. You and Renjun were the only two in the elevator, as Director Jo had stayed to review a couple more things with the other Director, and the Budgeting team stayed on that floor. As soon as the doors shut, your coworker let out a long and low whistle, “Can’t tell if you hate him or if you want to fuck him.”

You immediately rolled your eyes, “Neither. I’m only a little pissed at him because he spilled my coffee on me this morning. I’ll be over it by lunchtime.”

“Well, I, personally was choking on pheromones. _He_ at least wants to fuck _you_.”

“You’re so weird.” You groaned, stepping off the elevator onto your floor. “And besides, last I checked, which was, uhm, _right now_ , I have a boyfriend. So I don’t give a shit if he wants to jump my bones. I already _have_ someone doing that.”

Renjun’s desk was unfortunately right next to yours, meaning that you couldn’t escape him, “You don’t have a soulmate, so does it really matter?”

And _that_ was when you almost socked him in the face. Normally you loved your coworker/office buddy very much. But when it came down to it, he had a tattoo, and you didn’t. He could never understand you. It mattered _because_ you didn’t have a tattoo. You put four years of hard work into loving Lee Donghyuck, much more effort than Huang Renjun and his soulmate would ever put into their own love. So no freaking way would you throw it all out for one hot guy who—if he does even want to fuck you—would most likely want it as a casual thing, until he found his own soulmate. Not to mention, you _work with him_. A definite no from you.

“Don’t you have a report due for Director Jo before lunch today?” You snapped, slamming your files onto your desk.

He picked up on your aggressive passive-aggressiveness, nodding his head in apology before taking his own seat. Sitting at your desk, you stretched out a crick in your neck before snatching Renjun’s notes to combine them with your own to make your department’s official report of the meeting to send to Park Jisung for him to then add to the official meeting report that would then be sent to the Chairwoman.

* * *

Pushing your front door open that night, you were still arguing with your boyfriend about the movie you had seen for your date night. You thought it was awful, but he on the other seemed to think that it was the next James Cameron’s Avatar or something.

“Sherlock Gnomes is a cinematic masterpiece!” He claimed fervently, taking your coat from you to hang up in your hallway before putting his own up and following you further into your apartment.

“It’s worse than the first one, somehow.” You retorted over your shoulder as you went down the hallway towards your bedroom and he remained in the kitchen.

Donghyuck’s voice carried perfectly fine through your medium-sized apartment, “You take that back! Gnomeo and Juliet _saved_ 2011!”

“Never!”

You had just gotten your jeans off and a sleep shirt on when you were suddenly pushed onto your bed. Fingers flew at your exposed sides as your shirt had ridden up. Thrashing underneath Donghyuck, you cackled painfully as you tried to push or kick him off, but he’d gotten you perfectly caught off-guard and precisely pinned.

“Take it back!” He demanded, his normal mischievous smirk lighting up across his face.

“Nope!” You choked back through your laughter, managing to yank your hand out from under his thigh and get some kind of leverage to fight off his unrelenting tickles.

“Admit that Kelly Asbury and John Stevenson are the greatest minds of our generation!”

“Oh—oh my G-God! Do you really know the directors of both films off the top of your head?” You were laughing even harder now, tears streaking down your face as you continued your ineffective resistance.

“Say it!”

“No!”

“Say it!”

At this point you weren’t even making any sound as you laughed, in that stage where every part of your body felt like it was made of air, and the only thing you could ever experience for the rest of your life was this moment. Donghyuck, in a move very unlike him, gave up, rolling off of you onto the bed. He promptly sat up, watching you recover with a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. When you had finally regained function of your lungs, heart, and brain again, you looked over to him with a residual grin on your face.

“I love you, Hyuck.” You murmured, reaching out to gently play with one of his hands.

“I just tortured you for three minutes straight and the first thing you say is that you love me? You’re some kind of masochist, Y/N.” Despite his sarcastic and teasing words, you could see the genuine affection for you in his eyes as he turned his hand over to lace his fingers with yours, giving it a gentle squeeze.

You tugged on his hand, and he rolled his eyes, knowing exactly what you wanted, “Can I get in my own pajamas first? You’re so clingy.”

“Says the man who texted me seventeen times after our first date telling me how much he enjoyed it and awkwardly asking if I wanted to go on another one and how pretty and wonderful and fantastic I am.” You reminded him of it as you let go of his hand, allowing him to stand up and head for your dresser. Scooting up further on your bed, you got into a more comfortable position among your pillows and blankets.

“I was afraid of dying alone, my bad. Now I’m afraid I _won’t_ die alone, and that we’ll become ghosts or something and you’ll insist on haunting the same poor motherfucker as me.”

You blindly threw a pillow in the general area of his head and knew that you had hit your target when you heard a surprised yelp come from him.

“Shut the fuck up, you love me.”

Donghyuck returned, kneeling on the bed beside you. He reached out with a tender hand to fix some of your hair, then leaned over to press his lips sweetly against yours. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

He flopped down beside you, crawling underneath the blanket too. And you wasted no time in tucking yourself under his arm, loosely tangling your legs together, and intertwining your fingers with his. Donghyuck rested his forehead against your hair, just above your temple. He liked the smell of your conditioner, he had admitted one night when it was 2 am and you were dozing off, but he was still wide awake. He said that he started realizing he was falling in love with you when he’d catch whiffs of it when you weren’t around him and his heart would do somersaults. Now, to him it just smelled like home. Your home, with him.

“Can I tell you about my day?” You requested quietly, not needing to speak very loud for him to hear you.

When you got these rare opportunities to just be with each other without the other already being asleep or having taken some work home with them, they usually went one of two ways. Either you’d say nothing, enjoying a pleasant silence until one of you started drifting off. After which the other would then gently push them away, allowing each of you your space to sleep comfortably. Or, you would share a hushed conversation that could contain anything from giggling over some meme you’d sent to each other during one of your breaks that day, to ranting about some idiot you’d encountered at work, to asking philosophical queries about the meaning of life, or even just an entire superficial conversation of small talk. That was what you liked about being with Donghyuck, even after so long, the dull moments still brought you peace and left you feeling warm inside.

Your boyfriend merely gave a low hum in assent, taking his hand from yours to innocently rest it on your thigh, rubbing soothing shapes into your skin.

“I was barely on time to work, which I completely blame you for.”

Donghyuck let out a light snicker, squeezing some of your thigh between his middle finger and thumb as some kind of apology or reassurance of his guilt.

“Except in N-City time, that meant that I was horribly late. I stepped off the elevator and collided with this freaking giant, spilling my wonderful, beautiful, much-needed coffee down the front of my shirt.”

You could feel your boyfriend smile against your head and flicked his chest as a warning of no particular punishment.

“I had an extra blazer in my desk, thankfully. And then I get to my meeting with the Budgeting Department, and it turns out this dude is the new Assistant Director for Budgeting. So, bless my mouth for keeping shut when I had ran into him. It would’ve been just my luck to have cursed out someone who is technically my superior.”

He pressed a gentle kiss to your cheek, then to your lips, “I’m so proud of you, hon.”

“For not cursing out some random guy? You have some pretty low standards for me, Hyuck.”

“You’ve never been the best at office politics.”

“I know, I know.” You sighed, kissing him once more. “So how was your day?”

“Boring.”

“Ah yes, I forgot that you have the most boring job ever, being a crime scene analyst.”

“I had to dust some old lady’s car for fingerprints and took a single sample of blood that ended up being her grandson’s from three days ago when he scraped his knee at the park. No enthralling murders of any sort lately.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Fingers crossed.”

There was still one thing on your mind, even as Donghyuck kept giving you lazy kisses.

“Have you talked to Yuta lately?”

“Yeah, today, actually. Did something happen at work?”

“People are saying that he either got fired or is working on a Japanese branch of N-City.”

“He told me not to divulge company secrets, but he is _‘visiting his grandparents back home’_ right now.”

“Good, good.”

You grinned at the implications, excited for N-City to be expanding, and for Yuta to have been given such a lucrative opportunity to help start it up.

* * *

“Ms. Y/L/N!” A voice boomed through your floor, one that you had been hearing more and more frequently over the past few weeks.

Pretending that you didn’t hear Assistant Director Wong, you continued on reading the research paper your intern had written. Earlier, you’d offered to review Zhong Chenle’s paper before he submitted it to his professor in two weeks. Which gave you ample to time to properly scourge it for mistakes, errors, or to just digest and enjoy a well-written paper. You weren’t quite sure which it would be yet, as you had just taken a sip of your water, uncapped a pen, and read the first two lines when Wong Yukhei appeared beside your desk.

“Ms. Y/L/N.” He repeated, thankfully quieter now that he wasn’t on the other side of the building.

“I’m very busy right now, Mr. Wong.” You replied without even glancing up the from the paper, bracketing a sentence and adding ‘source?’ in the margins.

Over the course of getting to know him, he had finally worn you down enough to call him Mr. Wong instead of his full title, as you typically did with the Directors and Assistant Directors. You could feel him leaning over your shoulder to read the paper as well, hyperaware of his warm breath washing over the shell of your ear for a moment before he straightened up.

“Isn’t Chenle your intern?”

“Yes, I agreed to review his term paper before he submitted it to his professor.”

“Where is he?”

“Lunch with Renjun, Yeeun, and Mark.”

“So your coworkers and _intern_ are out at lunch, but you aren’t?”

“It appears so.”

He let out a short sigh, snatching the pen from your hand right as you went to mark something.

“Hey!” You said indignantly, finally looking up from the paper as you tried to reach up for your pen. But unfortunately, you were sitting down, Mr. Wong was exceptionally tall, _and_ he was childishly holding it above his head.

“Come to lunch with me.”

You held a momentary staring contest before you finally conceded, “Let me mark one more thing, then we’ll go.”

Mr. Wong graciously returned it to your hand, a victorious grin across his lips. You circled a term then drew an arrow out to the margins, writing in that Chenle had misused it, probably thinking of a different one. The correct term you didn’t provide, however. He should find it for himself.

Capping your pen, you plopped it into the jar on your desk as you set the paper down.

“Who’s that?” The man behind you asked, and you followed his gaze to the picture frame right beside your pencil jar.

“Oh, that’s my boyfriend, Lee Donghyuck. This was a little over a year ago, on our third anniversary.” You informed him proudly, picking up the frame so he could get a better look.

“Ah.”

At his reply, or lack thereof, you set the picture back onto your desk and pushed your chair back. Standing up, you grabbed your purse before gesturing for Mr. Wong to lead the way to the elevator.

The restaurant he had in mind was apparently within walking distance, as he took the sharp turn on the ground floor away from the parking garage. As you walked together, you cursed his exceptionally long legs, struggling to keep up with your shorter legs _and_ getting a little jostled around in the crowd. When some child had barreled into the back of your knees, nearly toppling you over, you snapped. Clenching your jaw and setting your sights dead ahead, you put on your most determined get-out-of-my-way face. Almost like magic, the passerby started maneuvering around you, and you were finally able to catch up to Mr. Wong right before he crossed a crosswalk. He seemed slightly amused and slightly impressed as you kept it up going across the street.

“You cleared them out.” He commented as the two of you finally arrived at the restaurant.

“Yeah,” You said, approaching the hostess with him.

Once the two of you were seated with your menus, you scanned over the options, trying not to curse at the prices. This would leave you eating in the free staff cafeteria and ordering cheap takeout for the next week. Oh joy.

After receiving your drinks from the waitress, you took a sip as you waited for Mr. Wong to say something. He’d been trying to get you to go to lunch with him for the past three weeks, he must have something specific in mind to talk to you about. He seemed to notice you eyeing him, and cleared his throat, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his dress shirt as if to visibly take himself out of work mode.

“Why are you looking at me so suspiciously, Y/N? Is it so weird for me to want to have lunch with one of my colleagues?”

“Uh, yeah.” You snorted, overcoming your surprise at him calling you by your first name. It really shouldn’t have surprised you, Mr. Wong didn’t seem to care about formality at all when it came to you for some reason.

“Why?”

“First of all, I’m not your colleague. You’re technically my superior, and we’re not even in the same department. So yeah, it’s a little weird to me.”

He chuckled, bright smile doing little to relax you, “You should really learn to be more trusting, Y/N. I thought you were interesting, and I’m in need of a friend in the office.”

You thought about this crucially for a moment. It made sense, he had only been hired a little less than a month ago, and you figured that the only person he really saw regularly was Jisung, as the intern was basically his personal assistant. You were surprised that he hadn’t come along too.

“Okay.”

Mr. Wong’s smile increased by approximately a thousand kilowatts, and you found yourself almost smiling too.

“So why didn’t Jisung come too? You two are pretty much attached at the hip at this point.”

“He needed a break from me, I could tell. I think I annoy him honestly.”

At this you laughed a bit, the idea of Mr. Wong annoying his intern was something that you could easily imagine. Jisung was a rather particular boy, and Mr. Wong seemed a bit more all over the place. You two kept talking, eventually veering away from your common topic of your workplace and instead delving into more personal things like hobbies, interests, childhoods, wherever the conversation led you.

As you got a better feel for the new Assistant Director of Budgeting, you could see why Director Kim, the others in Budgeting, as well as your own boss, had such high praises for him. Despite him often cracking jokes or making quips, he had a somehow comforting intelligence. Not the kind that made everyone else feel dumb in comparison and secretly hate him for. His was more of a genuine interest and understanding of people, the world, and the things he was passionate about. Which extended past budgeting, finance, and economics. You learned about his love for watersports, which didn’t surprise you too much, he seemed like an athletic man. But his affinity for trying (and mostly failing) at learning how to cook was rather funny to you. According to him, his old college roommate Kun would fear for his life every time Mr. Wong approached the stove, but now he could competently make himself some basic meals.

“But I really do eat out too much,” he gestured around at the restaurant and the many plates of food he had ordered for himself. “I need to find someone who can cook for me.”

“Hire a personal chef,” you half-joked after swallowing your bite of food, also gesturing around at the fancy establishment you were in. “You can probably afford one.”

“Not quite what I meant.” Mr. Wong shook his head with a faint smile across his face, mouth contorting awkwardly before he asked, “So… how did you and Dong- Dong— what was his name?”

You raised an eyebrow suspiciously, “Donghyuck.”

“Yeah, how did you two meet?” Mr. Wong’s disregard for your boyfriend’s name rubbed you the wrong way, a stark contrast from the warm and positive feelings you’d had for him just moments prior.

“Mutual friend set us up in college.”

“That’s a rather mundane way for soulmates to meet.”

“We both… don’t have, uhm, tattoos.” You crossed your legs, feeling _extremely_ uncomfortable now.

“You’re happy?”

“Yes. Why are you so curious about my relationship?”

Mr. Wong sighed, wiping at his mouth with the scarlet cloth napkin that had been laying across his leg. He rolled up his sleeves, holding his right hand out towards you. With the other, he pointed to a rather dark freckle on his thumb. Unsure of what he was insinuating, you hid your own right hand underneath your thigh instinctively.

“Could I see your right hand please, Y/N?” He requested sweetly, but you were frozen.

“What are you doing, Mr. Wong?” You asked, laughing nervously as you tried to play this off as another one of his goofs, one that you didn’t understand at all.

“Call me Yukhei.”

“No. What are you doing?”

“Please, can I see your right hand?”

“Why?”

“Please.”

Against your better judgement, you removed your hand from where it was wedged between your leg and your chair, hesitantly holding it over the center of the table beside his. His left hand gently turned yours so that the side with your thumb was facing up like his. And when he put them beside each other, you didn’t see anything at first. Then he pointed to your own dark freckle that you’d ignored for your whole life, in the same location as his.

When you still hadn’t said anything, Mr. Wong let out a short sigh of exasperation, “We’re soulmates, Y/N.”

After a split-second of confusion and disbelief, you snorted, pulling your hand back, “It’s a freckle, Mr. Wong. People have flowers and animals and words as their tattoos, not freckles.”

“My grandparents’ was a white splotch on their elbow.”

“And mine had a duckling on their asscheeks, so what?”

He rubbed his face in apparent frustration with you, changing tactics this time, “Didn’t you feel something? When we met in the hallway?”

“I felt scalding hot coffee on my chest. That’s it.” You crossed your arms, scanning the room for the waitress so you could get your check.

“It was an iced coffee.”

“See? That’s how little that meeting meant to me, I couldn’t even remember what kind of coffee I had.”

Glancing at Mr. Wong’s face again for a moment, you could tell that your dismissal of it hurt him, but you really couldn’t care less. He was just another person without a tattoo who was clinging desperately to the notion that maybe this one little mark may be it. You used to be like that, too, until you’d finally gotten over yourself and accepted your challenge: to find and choose your own love.

Finally, you made eye contact with your waitress, gesturing her over to quietly request the check. As far as you were concerned, this lunch was over, and you never needed or wanted to see Mr. Wong again. Especially if he was going to try to keep this delusion going.

“Y/N, please. I know that you have D—”

Apparently, he _was_.

“Don’t say his name!” You snapped, taking out your wallet to retrieve your card to pay for your meal.

Mr. Wong grabbed your check from in front of you, putting it with his own as well as his card, and handed all three to the waitress. You glared at him, unclenching your jaw to spit out, “You can’t buy me, Mr. Wong.”

He shrugged.

* * *

When you reached your floor after that abysmal lunch—with Mr. Wong still stubbornly in tow—you were pleasantly surprised to see a familiar figure at your desk, one that washed all of your annoyance, worries, and fears away.

“Hey, baby,” You grinned as you approached Donghyuck, pulling him in for a kiss. Yep, there it was. That feeling that confirmed that you loved _him_. And that was final. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to come surprise you with lunch reservations.” He explained sheepishly, getting flustered like he did any time he tried to do anything remotely romantic.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I had a business lunch today.” You went to gesture to Mr. Wong, but when you turned around, you found that he had disappeared. Probably went back up to Budgeting.

“That’s okay, I should’ve checked beforehand.”

“Another time?”

“I don’t know, you know that I’m a very busy man, it’s difficult for me to make time—”

You cut off his teasing excuse with a sharp smack on the arm, “Oh shush. It’ll be my treat next time, okay?”

“Okay,” Donghyuck grinned, kissing you one more time before heading towards the elevator. “I’ll see you at home.”

“Bye.” You gave him a short wave, watching him until the elevator doors had closed on his figure.

When you went to sit at your desk, Renjun, who had been watching the whole encounter, coughed. Looking at him with an eyebrow raised, you waited for whatever commentary he had on your personal life this time.

“Assistant Director Wong looked like he was genuinely contemplating murder when you kissed Donghyuck.” Renjun stated, only making you roll your eyes as you opened your laptop.

“You know, it’s almost like… I don’t care.”

* * *

The rest of your work day had been uneventful, just your normal duties and no sort of interaction with the Budgeting Department. When you got home, you hung your purse up in your entryway then kicked your shoes off. If you were in any better of a mood, you might have shouted out that you were home, to see if Donghyuck was there or not. But judging by the bowl of mac and cheese left on the kitchen table with your favorite purple-handled spoon sticking out of it, you already knew he was.

You shoveled in a few spoonfuls of the mac and cheese that was just warmer than room temperature and took a long sip of water right from your faucet before making your way even further into your apartment. Your feet, wrists, and back were aching from your unusually rigorous routine of sitting at a desk and typing for about five hours, and also standing in Director Jo’s office for well over an hour as you listened in on a teleconference she was having with the newly-promoted Directors Nakamoto and Moon in Japan.

Barely past the threshold of your bedroom doorway, you were already peeling your shirt and slacks off, rooting around in your drawers for lounge clothes. Your boyfriend was laying on your bed, eyes unblinking as he scoured what you assumed to be the newest edition of his favorite quarterly criminology journal.

“Hey, honey, how was your day?” Donghyuck asked without even glancing in your direction, too enthralled by a new pattern of bloodspatter or some other gruesome thing.

“Just a bit weird.” You sighed, setting your phone down on your nightstand and stretching out a crick in your neck.

“Oh.” He closed his magazine before tucking it under his pillow, then patted the space beside him. “Tell me about it.”

You gratefully obliged, laying down next to him and feeling immediate relief as his arm encircled you and you laid your head into the crook of his neck. In all honesty, just laying here had already cleansed your tired form of the trials of the day, and you could probably spend the rest of your life right there, not thinking about Mr. Wong, your freckle, or your non-existent soulmate. But Donghyuck was often times too curious for his—or your—own good, and you knew that’d he bother you about it if you didn’t tell him now. You were definitely too tired to put up with that kind of bullshit. Not only that, but you surely didn’t believe it, so why not tell him about the crazy conversation you’d had with a delusional man at your work?

“Do you remember the guy I was telling you about a few weeks ago? The new hire in the Budgeting department?”

“Trying to make me jealous, Y/N?”

You rolled your eyes at your boyfriend’s teasing, “No way. Trust me, this dude is totally crazy.”

“How so?”

“He thinks I’m his soulmate.”

Despite your light-hearted tone of voice, there was a heavy, long pause. The air suddenly felt more difficult to breathe, like it was a thick syrup getting stuck in your airways and seeping into your lungs. Donghyuck's chest rose and fell with a deep breath. You could practically hear the gears turning in his head as he tried to think of what to say. Your own breathing was shallow as you awaited his response.

“Why does he think that?”

His voice was strained, as if he too, was being suffocated by the atmospheric change.

“It’s nothing.”

“Y/N.” Donghyuck suddenly sat up, knocking you back onto the bed. He looked at you, eyebrows raised as he clearly waited for you to explain.

Sitting yourself up, you couldn’t help but rub forcefully at your thumb, as if you could make it disappear. The visage of Mr. Wong’s thumb next to yours flickered into your thoughts for a moment, and you shook your head minutely against the memory.

“It’s stupid really, it’s just a little freckle that is in _relatively_ the same location on our thumbs.”

Your boyfriend’s jaw clenched and unclenched as he seemed to be processing this. You scooted closer to him, reaching your hand out for his. But he sharply withdrew his hand away from your comforting hold as if you’d just burned him. Really, he couldn’t believe this?

“Hyuck, come on. Freckles aren’t tattoos, this guy’s just desperate.”

“Let me see your hand.”

“Oh come on, it’s just—” You stopped yourself when you saw how deathly serious he was. Knowing that this would be the only way to assuage his rather irrational fears, you obligated.

Your hand was shaking much more than it should have been, feeling strangely cold without Donghyuck’s wrapped around it. Instead, his hands were staying put in his lap as he scrutinized the skin atop your thumb.

“Hyuck—”

“When did he tell you?”

“At lunch.”

You knew those two words had just pierced his heart like blunt and stubborn blades. The lunch that had prevented you from eating with him, was with a man who was convinced that he was your soulmate.

As if powered by pulleys and levers and made of nuts and bolts, Donghyuck turned around and stood up from the bed. He grabbed his phone and an overcoat as you watched him fearfully. You had a million guesses as to what he was doing, and all of them spiked your apprehension.

He spoke, “I’m going to stay at Jeno’s tonight. Clear my head and all that.”

“So… you’re not leaving me?” You clarified, the question hanging haphazardly in the space between you two for twenty seconds too long.

Donghyuck didn’t say another word, but the bittersweet, adoring expression that he still held in his eyes when he looked at you was answer enough. You gave him a resolute nod, knowing that the heartache you felt right now would only be for tonight. In the morning, he’d be back, and you two would be truly, perfectly in love again.

* * *

A crash woke you up the next morning.

The empty bed you woke up in wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to you, you’d gone on business trips before, and Donghyuck would often get called on-scene at ungodly hours of the morning.

But the fact that you were woken up by a crash that sounded like it was coming from your living room, at just after 3 a.m, was what startled you. It would be just your luck to have a burglar in your house the one recent night you’d been home alone. Cautiously stepping towards your bedroom door, you heard the intruder mutter something under his breath, and the lilts and intonations of that voice you knew all too well.

Shuffling out to the living room, you let out a yawn that turned into your boyfriend’s name. His head snapped up from the bag he was hoisting from the floor up onto his shoulder, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Rubbing your eyes, you took in the scene in front of you. Donghyuck had a duffel bag over his shoulder, with one more at his feet and two at the front door. They all seemed packed to the brim, much more than his normal equipment for an early call out to work. It seemed like… almost all of his possessions, the things that he’d owned or bought before you moved in together.

“W-What are you doing, my love?” Your voice cracked as you brought out the term of endearment you only used for him maybe four times a year, the one that you held nearest and dearest to your heart, to remind him that you held him as the person nearest and dearest to your heart.

The confliction and pain evident on Donghyuck’s face perched your stomach precariously at the edge of a cliff, shaking as if it could drop at any moment. Your bottom lip quivered as your mind jumped across that same gorge to awful, horrible, terrible conclusions. You repeated the question, sounding much more demanding and distressed, not wanting your thoughts to be true. It couldn’t be. You knew him so well, you could always read him like a book. One that was written just for you.

“You need to be with your soulmate, Y/N.” His declaration was low but firm, sending your stomach plummeting down the canyon.

Before you could think, you’d thrown yourself at him, cupping each of his cheeks in your hands as your eyes searched his for any indication that he was lying, that he was playing the worst prank on you. There was nothing like that in his eyes, no emotion, just a sort of dead acceptance. Your own were watering up as your mouth parted in a silent wail, fingers rooting in the hair at the back of his head, as if your hold there would stop him from leaving you.

“Please, Hyuck.” You whimpered, ignoring the tears falling freely from your eyes. “Please, please, please. Please don’t leave me. I love you, I love you so much. Don’t do this. Please, for all the stars in heaven, stay with me. I love you more than anything, Lee Donghyuck. Don’t leave me. Please.”

You kissed him with more fervor and emotion than any kiss you’d shared before, not during your first time, or after your first ‘ _I love you_ ’s, or on any of your anniversaries. This kiss was bursting with every feeling you’d ever felt about Donghyuck magnified by a thousand and catalyzed by your acutely anguishing need for him to just _stay._ Your heart soared when you felt him kiss you back with an equal amount of passion, a hand coming to grip behind your neck, pushing you further into him. His lips enraptured you, so fully completing you.

When the kiss was broken, and you opened your eyes again, you looked at him with hope. But his blank face from before was now clouded with angst. He broke your eye contact, looking down as he picked up his other bag. Instead of taking them back to your bedroom like you prayed he would, he continued to the front door. You still held on to the last shred of dream that he would pick up the other two and bring all four back to your bedroom, giving you a mischievous smile as he asked why you were still standing there.

He didn’t.

“I’m okay… with not being the love of your life. I had you for a little bit, and that’s enough for me. You deserve your true happiness, Y/N. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t be that for you.”

As Donghyuck went to reach for the door handle, you couldn’t inspire your legs to move at all, but you managed to call out, “Donghyuck?”

He bit down hard on his lip as he looked at you attentively, and you could see the first of his tears glistening down his cheeks.

“I love you.”

He nodded, wiping at his eyes with one of his jacket sleeves before going to load up all of his bags on his shoulders and under his arms, “Thank you, for letting me hear that one last time.”

Squeezing your eyes shut, you couldn’t bear to watch him actually leave you, knowing that that image would be emblazoned into your mind for the rest of your life. You didn’t open them again until you heard the click of the front door closing behind him. And when they did flutter open once more, the doorway that once held Lee Donghyuck was empty, just like you.

* * *

When you woke up for the second time that morning, you shivered.

Unable to even force yourself back to your bedroom after the heartbreaking event, you’d plopped down onto your couch and cried yourself to sleep there. And any calmness you’d displayed last night was gone as you sat up on your couch. It finally hit you.

Lee Donghyuck was gone from your life.

You let out a nearly inhuman screech, throwing the closest thing to you across the room. There was a satisfying _thunk_ as it impacted with the wall. Standing up, you rubbed your face in distress, caught between hyperventilating and letting out the occasional half-whimper half-yell as you paced in front of your burgundy couch in agitation.

Your alarm going off snapped your focus over to the other side of the room. Treading over, you spotted your phone face-down on the floor, an unsettlingly satisfying dent in the wall a few feet above it. Picking it up, you winced at the spiderweb of cracks adorning your screen now. You were pretty sure your warranty didn’t cover this.

Dismissing your work alarm, your breath hitched in your throat for a moment as the notification faded away to reveal your lockscreen. A picture of you kissing Donghyuck’s cheek while he pretended to be annoyed. Tears erupted quickly in your eyes, pouring down your cheeks that still had dried crusts of your salty sadness from hours ago. You were fully sobbing now, unable to do much except sit on your floor and let the pain wrack through your exhausted and hollow form. Tears, drool, and snot were making the most disgusting cocktail on your face, something you didn’t even register as your mind was preoccupied with willingly drowning in sorrow.

As if with their own thoughts, your fingers fumbled to unlock your phone, a sharp pain shooting up your thumb in the process. With a hiss at the rather welcome pain, you stuck the pad of your thumb into your mouth, suckling at the blood that had gathered there. Your other thumb clicked Donghyuck’s contact, putting him on speakerphone. It rang, and rang, and rang.

The robotic order of his voicemail reached your ears, and you stuttered through something completely unintelligible. You weren’t even sure of what you were trying to say, just blubbering on and on desperately.

After your seventh attempt at calling him, he started declining your calls and sending you straight to voicemail.

After your fifteenth attempt at calling him, you were no longer greeted by the voicemail. He had blocked you.

You contemplated calling in to work sick today. And tomorrow. And the day after. And for the rest of your lonely, miserable life.

But you didn’t. Instead, you numbly turned on your coffee maker, dressed yourself in your normal work attire, and made yourself some toast. It was bland and slightly burned. You didn’t even bother putting butter on it. When you poured yourself a cup of coffee, you dumped some milk in to cool it down before chugging it. You were on autopilot as you left for work, lamely going through the motions as your brain couldn’t focus on anything. It felt completely turned off, shut off from you and the rest of the world. Maybe protecting you from any pain. After all, wasn’t numbness better than the excruciating sensation of your heart being twisted, yanked, and shredded into a million pieces?

Sitting down at your desk, you opened your laptop and logged on. Fingers hesitated over the keys, unsure and unmotivated. Your eyes were fixated blankly on the homescreen, knowing that if they drifted, they’d get stuck on the picture on your desk and never look away.

“Ms. Y/L/N.” Director Jo’s voice spoke up from behind you, sounding rather surprised.

Spinning your chair around to face her, you saw that she still had her overcoat on as well as her purse and laptop bag on her shoulders, and a steaming cup of her herbal tea she drank daily in hand. You looked at your boss, waiting for her to say something again.

“You’re here early.”

At this, you looked over to the clock on the wall behind her. It was still a half an hour until you or any of your other coworkers normally showed up. Director Jo must have noticed that something was off, cocking her head to the side. Jerking her thumb over her shoulder, she offered, “Would you mind doing some filing for me, Ms. Y/L/N?”

Filing was something for Chenle or another intern to do, not for someone of your position in the department, which both you and Director Jo knew very well. But it was a welcome distraction for you, legs eagerly following her to her office. She set her stuff down in her chair, and you immediately stood in front of the filing cabinet, eyes already focused on the tray of paper that needed to be filed.

There was absolute silence in the office except for the sounds of Director Jo’s fingers clacking over her desktop keyboard, the occasional tiny slurp as she’d take a sip of her tea, the metallic sounds of the filing cabinets being opened and closed by you, and the rustling of papers from either of you.

You could hear the sounds of your coworkers arriving in groups, a steady hum building up outside the safety of the cherry oak door and windows covered by closed blinds. A knock came to the door, the rather confused-sounding voice of Zhong Chenle piercing through, “Director Jo? Are you in here?”

“Don’t come in, Chenle. See if Mr. Huang, Mr. Lee, or Ms. Yang need anything.” She replied, eyes briefly flashing over to you as you kept performing your mindless task.

“Yes, ma’am.”

When you’d finished the last paper several minutes later, you were left feeling sharply aware of your emptiness. Now it truly felt like you had no purpose.

“Y/N.” Director Jo speaking your first name startled you from your daze, watching her with intrigue as she gestured for you to sit down in the chair across her desk.

You obliged, crossing your legs together and remaining absolutely silent, again waiting for her to speak first.

“You’ve worked here for three years. I have you seen you during final exams as an intern, after pulling all-nighters to finish a project, and when your grandmother passed, Y/N. This isn’t like any of those. What is going on with you?”

Opening your lips, it took several tries for you to will any kind of sound from your dry mouth. Finally, you croaked out, “Donghyuck left me.”

Her lips formed around a silent ‘oh,’ clearly unsure of what to say. Most people would be, as breakups and this kind of heartbreak just didn’t happen for people with soulmates. Which you assumed Director Jo was such, a person with a soulmate. You couldn’t stand to look at her, practically burning with shame as your eyes filled with tears yet again. How pathetic you must seem, some poor girl without a soulmate decided to find herself a pretty boy also without a soulmate and tried to be in love but ended up getting her heart broken instead.

“Take the rest of the day—”

“No. Please, let me stay here, let me work. I need this.”

“I don’t have any more filing for you to do.”

“I’ll do your taxes if I have to, just… don’t let me be alone with my thoughts today, Director Jo.”

She sighed, thinking for a moment, “Chenle told me you had agreed to review his term paper for him. Have you finished that yet? I’m sure it’ll take you well over an hour, maybe two if you really nitpick your way through it.”

You shook your head, you hadn’t gotten past the first paragraph you’d read before lunch yesterday. Standing up, you bowed wordlessly to your boss before exiting her office. Hopefully you hadn’t cried for long enough that your eyes were noticeably red and swollen. Maybe you’d be able to pass it off as sleep-deprivation.

Clearly not, as Renjun as zeroed in on you before you were halfway back to your desk. He watched you approach, eyes widening as he took in your surely-disheveled state. Chenle was sitting in a chair beside him, brow furrowed in concentration as he reviewed and took notes on something that Renjun must’ve asked him to do. Sitting at your desk, the sounds of the two men greeting you were muffled as your eyes fixated themselves on your closed laptop. Without looking, your hand reached out to lay the frame photo-side down on your desk.

That fucking hurt.

“Chenle, you should go back to Director Jo, I’ll finish the notes up. Thank you.” Renjun dismissed the intern, who seemed uncertain of whether he should go or not.

He made up his mind quick enough though, as you heard his footsteps scurrying away from you. Your coworker had an uncanny knack for somehow also turning into your best friend at times. Like when you’d pull an all-nighter for a report, or when your grandmother passed away. So it didn’t surprise you now that he had picked up on your small but powerful action.

With a soft voice, he said, “Do you want to talk?”

You shook your head fervently, lame fingers latching onto a pen. Renjun let out a short sigh, and you could practically hear him nodding his head beside you.

“Okay, I’m here if you do. You know that, right, Y/N?”

You nodded.

The purple cap of your pen flew off with ease, landing atop your laptop that you then scooted back to the furthest recess of your desk. Retrieving Chenle’s paper from your drawer, you took a deep breath. The black ink on crisp white paper brought a strange sort of solace to you, a bland and familiar sight. The words absorbed into the crevices of your mind, creating a blanket of perfect peace and distraction. It was a temporary fix, which you knew plain well. Later, your inner turmoil and heartbreak would burst through the thoughts of the psychological manipulation of advertising, piping geysers that would sear the pain permanently into the landscape of your mind. You knew that you wouldn’t mind the ugly areas of burnt memories, as they’d remind you of him. Of Lee Donghyuck.

A tap on your shoulder came an eternity later. Well, really on your second read-through of the paper, which felt like a string of blissfully boring eons. Looking over at the hand that still rested on your shoulder, you were surprised to see perfectly manicured red nails at the ends of the slender and pretty fingers. Following the arm up to the owner, you were met with the endearing and concerned face of Jang Yeeun, her shiny, straight black bob falling ever-so-slightly across her face as her head was tilted. You expected the figures of Renjun, Mark, and Chenle to be behind her, but instead it seemed that you were the only two left in your offices.

“Lunch?” She proposed sweetly, offering the hand that was earlier on your shoulder out to you.

“W-Where are the others?” You sounded out the sentence carefully, trying not to insult her. It wasn’t that you didn’t like Jang Yeeun, but you never had really talked to her in your whole time at the company except for work. So this was at the least… surprising.

“I thought that you might want you know… some girl time. Or something like that.” Her voice picked up speed at the end, as if she seemed almost nervous with saying that. “We don’t even have to go out, if you don’t want to. We can eat down in the cafeteria. Or get takeout and eat up here. Up to you.”

“Director Jo would kill us if we ate takeout here,” You found yourself almost giggling along with her, accepting her hand to stand up.

Yeeun linked her arm through yours, gently tugging you away from your desk and towards the elevator, “Takeout it is then.”

* * *

“No freaking way!” Yeeun squealed, spitting pieces of half-chewed rice out her mouth.

You couldn’t stop from laughing, wiping at the few that had gotten on your blouse, “No, I’m serious!”

“You’re telling me… that Huang Renjun actually asked Director Jo out?”

“On a dare from Mark, yeah. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard about this!”

“No!” She wiped at her mouth before fanning at her face where her eyes were starting to well up. “I’m going to freaking _cry_! That’s so funny. Wait, no I’m not going to cry, I’m going to fucking _piss myself_ , oh my god!”

Yeeun stood up, dabbing at her eyes with one hand as she stumbled away from your desk.

“Where are you going?” You asked through laughs of your own.

“I’m serious! I’m going to pee myself!” She cried over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner that lead to the bathrooms.

Left chuckling to yourself, you eagerly dug into your food for another mouthful of noodles. The elevator _bing!_ ed behind you. Spinning your chair around, you were expecting it to be another one of your coworkers coming back from their lunch break a little early. Instead, the form of Assistant Director Wong Yukhei came into your vision. You spun yourself back around, hoping that he was just coming to deliver a message to your boss or something. Hoping that news of your breakup hadn’t traveled all the way through N-City to reach his ears. Hoping that he’d ignore your figure that was slowly sliding down in your chair in an attempt not to be seen.

Miraculously, he did. His footsteps sounded as though they were in fact approaching your boss’ office, then came closer again. The _bing!_ of the elevator let you know that he was leaving, allowing you to breathe a sigh of relief. You were alone.

You were alone.

_You were alone._

Not just physically, in this room, but in all aspects of your life now. You would be coming home to an empty apartment everyday now, sleeping in a bed that was all too large for one person, and only making one cup of coffee every morning instead of two. You wanted to scream so badly, to just holler and shout and screech and yell until your throat was raw and sore, and then keep going. You wished for nothing else than to just tear your vocal cords apart. If you couldn’t ever tell Donghyuck that you loved him again, what the point in having them?

You hadn’t even realized that there were two heavy rivers rushing down your cheeks again until the motherly cooing of Jang Yeeun was beside your ears and her delicate fingers wiped a tissue across one, and then the other. She let you cry, continuing to clean you up and minimize the damage your sobbing would do to your appearance. You blubbered out something akin to ‘excuse me’ before launching yourself out of your chair and running to the bathroom.

The door slammed behind you, a garish sound that you barely registered. You fell to your knees in a stall, making sure to lock it behind you before you practically collapsed in front of the toilet bowl. Ghastly gathering of saliva pooled on your lips, which you spat along with half-chewed pieces of your noodles into the water below you. You felt yourself heaving, but nothing came out despite the full meal you’d just consumed.

* * *

Your throat burned.

According to Chenle, who for some reason had been the one to find you in the women’s bathroom dry-heaving and shaking, it was from the stomach acids that had risen up in your body’s failed attempts to expel your stomach contents.

Director Jo sent you home, with Chenle as your escort, and he’d even insisted on coming inside with you. He promptly fixed you a glass of water and a pill to relieve the near-migraine you’d developed while crumpled on the bathroom floor. The lines of the tile you were lying on for hours were still deeply ingrained into your legs, and you rubbed at them in an attempt to relieve the tender grooves. You were sitting nearly stark naked on your bed, having been ordered by Chenle to get into comfortable clothes.

The sounds of him in your kitchen kept you aware of the fact that he was still there. You’d been staring blankly at Donghyuck’s side of the bed, where his pastel yellow alarm clock was still plugged in. It was a gift from you for his second birthday you two celebrated together as a couple, and something he couldn’t grab while you were asleep that morning.

There was a knock at your door, “Y/N! Are you almost done?”

Chenle was the best intern your department ever had, fulfilling every job and duty that was requested of him with eagerness and success. Which included his new duty handed down from Director Jo of making sure that you didn’t become clinically depressed. Her exact words were ‘making sure she’s okay for tonight,’ but your version seemed more accurate.

Grumbling, you threw on a hoodie and some sweatpants before throwing open the door. Chenle startled a little before offering you a bright smile and leading the way back to your kitchen.

“I didn’t know you went to KAIST, Ms. Y/L/N! That’s where I’m going!” He commented cheerfully, causing you to blink in momentary confusion.

Glancing down at the hoodie you’d chosen, you winced when you saw the seal of your alma mater emblazoned across it proudly. It only reminded you of when you’d met Donghyuck.

Coughing and trying to distract yourself, you croaked out, “Uh, yeah, I know. I actually had Professor Go too.”

“Really?” Your intern’s eyes were shining brighter than most stars you’d seen, absolutely overjoyed at this revelation. “So you know how he grades, right? Do you think he’ll give me good marks on my paper?”

“Uh, no.” At the boy’s face falling, you added, “But don’t worry, I gave you suggestions and wrote in where you went wrong too. You can pick it up from my desk on Monday and still have plenty of time to fix it up before you turn it in to him.”

“Right, right. Thank you, Ms. Y/L/N!”

There was a short silence before Chenle suddenly turned around. When he faced you again, he had a bowl in his hand that he then set on the counter and scooted over to you gently. Eyeing him strangely, you accepted the spoon to bring the brothy soup to your lips.

“To help calm your stomach,” He explained, and you guessed that the large pot behind him only contained even more.

“You managed to make a whole ass pot of miso soup in the fifteen minutes I was gone?” You asked with an eyebrow raised, taking another sip.

“It was actually twenty, but yes. My mom hated cooking when I grew up, so she found shortcuts on almost every recipe and gave them to me.”

At this, you chuckled, setting the spoon down to instead opt to wrap your cold fingers around the warm bowl. Bringing the side to your mouth, you took your sips that way, reveling in the warmth soothing your irritated throat and soul.

“So, may I ask why there’s a dent in your wall?” Chenle’s eyes flicked over towards said wall.

Wordlessly, you brought out your phone and set it on the counter, displaying the cracks. He simply nodded.

Chenle stayed for a little while longer, watching some cheesy crime thriller movie with you that neither of you were super into, but it kept your attention well enough. Saying goodbye to him at your front door, as soon as you closed the green door behind him, it all came rushing back. The memories of Donghyuck heaving his bags onto his shoulders cutting to the empty doorway.

Never again would this threshold have him pass over it. Never again would these walls get knocked into by his failed attempt at pinning you to them. Never again would his keys be tossed into the bowl placed nearby. Never again would you pass over the threshold hand-in-hand with him, or get clumsily pinned to the walls, or accidentally take his set of keys in the morning instead of yours.

Never.

You could feel the resounding knock on your door shudder up through your spine that was pressed against it. Once again, you’d collapsed in on yourself in despair, this time in the company of your front door. The green was Hyuck’s idea.

Caught up in the memory of your mini-fight over what color to paint the door, you had completely forgotten about whoever was knocking on it. Until they did it again.

Scrambling to your feet, you figured that it’d be your neighbor asking for you to return the hammer you’d borrowed two months ago and _definitely hadn’t lost_.

As soon as you opened the door, you slammed it shut. At this point you should really just be expecting _everyone_ to turn out to be Wong Yukhei, coming to ruin your life.

He knocked again.

And again.

And again.

Sitting on your couch, you turned on the TV to some random action movie, putting it to full volume so that the explosions, yells, and gunshots effectively drowned out the sound of Assistant Director Wong knocking as well as your renewed cries. And also probably earned you a noise complaint.

* * *

Ah, the weekend.

No work, getting to sleep in, and a perfect time to spend your whole day in bed in pure misery.

You were currently reading the criminology journal Donghyuck had tucked under his pillow the night before. Laying on his side of the bed, enveloped in his scent with your head resting on his pillow and your legs crossed just like his were, you dutifully read the articles. Some of the terminology was familiar to you, things you’d catch during Donghyuck’s long-winded rambles about work, while others you had no sort of context for. Nonetheless, it was still an interesting read. Curious, you opened the bottom drawer of his nightstand, where you knew he kept all his past issues of the journal. There were dozens in there, it looked as though he’d been subscribed since high school.

Chuckling, you pulled out a couple more to read. Soon enough, you were surrounded by copies all around your bed. When your doorbell rang, you had to take your time getting off the bed, not wanting to crumple or bend any of them.

When you opened your front door, you frowned when you saw that nobody was there. You had taken a while to get there, but not long enough to warrant your visitor giving up and leaving. On your doormat was a folded piece of paper. Picking it up to carry it back inside, you unfolded it to read the messy scrawl inside.

_I know you don’t want to see me. I’m sorry. Please call me._

_\- Yukhei_

You didn’t even bother to read the phone number underneath. You had no intention whatsoever of calling. This was his fault. If he hadn’t come in with his matching freckle and rose-colored view of how soulmates should work, you would still be perfectly happy and in love with Donghyuck. Now, you were only one of those things.

Tossing the note onto your counter, you glanced at the time. 15:03 was a good enough time to have a late lunch and/or really late breakfast. Taking out one of the many containers that Chenle had put the leftover miso in, you didn’t even bother warming it up. Cold miso was better than nothing. Maybe you’d warm some up for dinner later.

You sipped from the container again, sitting cross-legged on your couch and binge-watching whatever old 90s sitcom was playing on TV. Before you knew it, your miso soup was drained, the show had changed to a primetime drama, the sun had set, the clock above your TV read 19:56, and you absolutely freaking _reeked_.

The hall creaked around you as you trudged through it, the bathroom as your destination. Turning the handle to a scalding hot temperature, you started yourself a shower. You had just gotten all of your skin tender and pink from the fiery spray when the obnoxiously loud ringer on your phone erupted from just outside your shower. Nearly slipping from the startle it gave you, you slowly regained your balance, then peered around your shower curtain to see who was calling. You were pretty sure it said Jang Yeeun.

Drying your hands, you then reached to accept the call, holding it up to your ear out from under the stream.

“Hello?”

“Y/N! Hey!” Her excited tone turned questioning, “Wait, are you in the shower?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Chenle said that he had tried calling you earlier, but you didn’t pick up.”

“He must’ve called when I was asleep.”

“He said he called at 14:00.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, you want to sleep over tonight? It feels like a ‘red wine and ice cream’ kind of night to me.” She also added, “Ki Huihyeon from Design is here too, if that does anything to help convince you.”

“ _I’m_ the one who got dumped, why do _you_ need the red wine and ice cream?”

“It’s called _sympathy_ , Y/N.”

You chuckled at this, genuinely contemplating the offer for a moment, until your eyes fell on the containers of shampoo and conditioner in your shower. A sadness came to you then, Donghyuck loved the smell of your conditioner. And like the sappy and sad person you were, you felt yourself biting back tears again.

“I’m going to have to pass on that tonight. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“The offer’s always on the table. Call me up at 2 a.m. and I’ll bust out the merlot and moose tracks.”

“Thanks, Yeeun.”

“Of course. Have a good night, Y/N.”

“You too. Bye, Huihyeon.”

You hung up after the background ‘goodbye!’ from Huihyeon. Gently setting your phone back down on your bathroom counter, your eyes were drawn sadly to the bottle of conditioner.

And you cried.

* * *

Monday came too soon. It was the same numb, dull process from Friday. With the added bonus of yet another portion of Chenle’s miso soup in your hand for lunch. You’d been living off of it for almost three days now. Probably not a good thing. But at least it was convenient.

Yet again you got to work fairly early, briefly contemplating asking Director Jo if she needed help filing or something of the sorts again. But you saw some new files perched atop your computer. Putting your purse down beside your desk, you delicately flicked through the folders. One was from the Design department, the mock-ups for your next billboard advertisement, and the other was the projected budget for the billboards. The recipient on both was ‘Assistant Director – Advertising.’

Frowning, you approached Director Jo’s office, files in hand. There was no Assistant Director of Advertising, nobody had been selected to replace Moon Taeil, as far as you knew. Maybe Yeeun got promoted after you left on Friday, and the papers were delivered to the wrong desk?

You knocked on Director Jo’s door, bowing to her as soon as she opened it.

“Good morning. How are you feeling?” She questioned, returning to her seat behind her desk.

You remained standing in front of her, holding the folders out, “I think these got delivered to my desk by mistake.”

Director Jo didn’t even look up from her screen as she replied, “If they’re reports that need review by the Assistant Director of Advertising, then no, they weren’t.”

“I— you chose me?” You were absolutely dumbfounded. Even before the mental breakdown you’d been having for the past four days, you couldn’t have dreamt that you’d be selected as Director Jo’s next Assistant Director. And after how you’ve been recently, she still wanted you?

“Of course. I trust that once you get your bearings again, you’ll turn into a fine Assistant Director.” Her words were simple and her tone nonchalant, but the weight of them hit you hard. She really did believe in you.

“Thank you so much, Director Jo.”

“I recommend you go get those reports done soon, Assistant Director Y/L/N.”

“Oh! Of course!”

As you bustled out of the office, you were grinning madly. A promotion. Maybe this was exactly what you needed to get a kickstart to happiness. Or at least not crippling sadness.

Humming to yourself, you powered through the reports, scrutinizing them and comparing them with emails exchanged through the departments and notes of meetings. The Design department had changed the agreed concept a little bit, with input from Mark Lee in your department as well as Na Jaemin from Budgeting. It all seemed fine with you at first glance, but you’d need a little while longer to perform a detailed review. You should have it submitted to Director Jo, and copies submitted to the other Directors and Assistant Directors by lunchtime.

Your coworkers had been filtering in as you worked, a fact that you were only vaguely aware of until you heard some giggles and shushes gathering behind your chair.

“Good morning, _Assistant Director Y/L/N Y/N_.” The ecstatic voice of Renjun came from behind you.

Turning around already with a grin on your face, you saw most of your coworkers there too, “How did you guys know?”

“Director Jo told us all on Friday.” Mark explained from beside Yeeun, who then spoke up with a smile of her own.

“Congrats, Y/N.”

“Thank you, thank you.” You nodded to them all. Spotting Chenle at the back, you whipped around to pluck his paper off your desk, holding it out for him to take, “Here you go, Chenle.”

“Thank you, Assistant Director Y/L/N.” He bowed his head deeper than he had this time last week.

Now you knew why Assistant Director Wong had been so insistent on you just calling him Mr. Wong, the title felt awkward to you. Especially since these people were previously your peers, and most had more experience than you.

“Congrats, Assistant Director Y/L/N.” As if you’d summoned him just with your brief thought of him, the voice of Wong Yukhei came from behind you.

Your coworkers immediately scattered as you went to turn around to face him. All thoughts of trying to be cordial and professional with your new colleague flew out the window when you looked down from his beaming face. You held back your instinctive guttural screech that formed when you saw a bouquet in his hands, wishing that you could slam your door in his face again. But you couldn’t.

“Here,” He said quietly, holding them out to you.

With no hesitation, you slapped them from his hands, spitting out lowly, “I don’t want your fucking flowers.”

“Then what do you want?”

“For you to _leave! me! alone!_ ” You didn’t mean to raise your voice loud enough for the entire area of cubicles to hear, but you did.

Mr. Wong’s face fell at the blatant, public rejection, nodding slightly before picking the bouquet up from the ground and walking away, shoulders hunched and reminding you very much of a kicked puppy.

It gave you _some_ satisfaction, but the clip of Donghyuck packing up his things was still playing over and over in your head. As you sat down and turned back to your papers, a broken whimper came from your lips. You desperately tried to muffle it with the back of your hand, but had only succeeded in slobbering on yourself, prompting your legs to carry you as far from the populated area as possible. And you ended up in the restroom again, the cold porcelain of the toilets contrasting your hot, blotchy skin as rough hiccups tortured your lungs and throat and your body was wracked by violent sobs.

You couldn’t spend as long in here as you had on Friday or emerge in as bad of shape. You were an Assistant Director now, you had duties and an image to maintain. Throwing the stall door open, you were thankfully met with an empty bathroom. Looking at your reflection in the mirror, you started with the easy things to fix. You wiped your under-eyes to clean them of your smearing mascara, then fixed the tuck of your shirt into your pants and placed a stray piece of hair back in its spot. Now you could address the real mess, your skin’s self-sabotage. Cold water could help to reduce a little bit of the swelling of your eyes. Buttoning up your shirt fully covered the blotchy skin on your chest, even if it did look a little different than your typical office appearance. After that, you couldn’t do much else without a full face of new makeup, but there was no point. Everyone on your floor could already guess what you were doing in here.

Taking a deep breath, you determinedly pushed the door open, nearly slamming it into Yeeun’s face. She jumped back, and you turned concerned, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! Are you okay, Yeeun?”

“Yeah,” She waved off your concerns and turned to her own. “Are _you_ okay?”

“Dandy.”

While she didn’t look completely convinced, she nonetheless turned to go back to your desks with you. You could see Renjun hurrying to throw something away as you approached. A few bright purple flower petals were laying at the top of his garbage can.

Sitting at your desk, you cleared your throat and desperately tried to change the subject, “So how was your weekend, Renjun?”

“It was good, Assistant Director Y/L/N.”

“Oh, if you insist on doing that, just call me Ms. Y/L/N, okay?”

“Okay, Ms. Y/L/N. How was your weekend?”

“Horribly depressing.” You replied nonchalantly, gripping your pen ever so slightly tighter as you kept skimming the reports.

“Ah.”

* * *

It was Friday that you saw Mr. Wong again, at a meeting with all the Directors, Assistant Directors, and the Board. And the meeting was about you. Not because you had done something wrong, it was really just a formality to have you introduce yourself and meet your new peers. You nearly squealed when you walked in and saw that Moon Taeil and Nakamoto Yuta were there too. When Director Moon had been Assistant Director Moon, he was basically your mentor, aiding and guiding you through much of your career. You were ecstatic that he was able to be here to see how far you’d come. The excited congratulations that came from your lips when you greeted Yuta was met with a bittersweet and much more mellow one from his. He must have heard about what happened.

Drawing your lips into a tight line, you gave him a formal nod before moving down the line of people, each one more powerful than the last, until you finally reached the Chairwoman. Sure, N-City had a CEO, a CFO, and a COO, but the Chairwoman was the true pinnacle of power in the company. You bowed the deepest to her, receiving only a short nod and phrase of greeting.

The rest of the meeting was essentially nothing. Refreshments were served, and the people in the conference room were free to mingle. Some discussed projects, but not much real business actually happened. You found yourself in an awkward position. Clinging to Director Jo was a viable option, but not one that made you seem like a strong leader. You knew that talking to Yuta would only lead to despair, or at the least, a very uncomfortable scenario for the both of you. And Director Moon was talking to both him and Mr. Wong. The Assistant Director of Design, Kim Jungwoo, was much too engrossed in his conversation with Director Kim Doyoung and CEO Lee for you to have any possible chance of joining in.

“Assistant Director Y/L/N!” Came a voice from the group that held your best option, a less-than-ideal option, and the _worst_ option for conversation.

It was Director Moon calling you over, and you had no choice to oblige. Better than standing in the middle of the room with a cup of water and not talking to anybody. Director Moon and Assistant Director Wong stepped away from each other to make room for you to join them. You refused to look in Assistant Director Wong’s direction, focusing almost entirely on Director Moon as he described how setting up the Japan branch was going. Yuta would occasionally give his input, and only then would you look at him.

You didn’t expect much from him. Yuta was Donghyuck’s friend first and was always closer to him than to you. At the end of the day, he couldn’t tend to both of your heartbreaks, which you would never have asked of him. And he chose Donghyuck. You could feel him glancing at you ever so often, as if trying to read your thoughts. Briefly you wondered if he had told Donghyuck about your promotion and this meeting. And if so, what did he say? Did he ask how you were doing, or for Yuta to let him know how you seemed at the meeting? Maybe he’d asked him to stop by your desk and see if the picture of you two was still proudly displayed there. It wasn’t, but you hadn’t removed it completely, still turned over exactly as it was a week ago. You could prop it back up any time you wanted to.

Whenever you did make eye contact with Yuta, there was a depth to his eyes that you’d never seen before. His features would curve into half a smile that never reached them, a sharp contrast from the bright and mischievous grin that often lit up his face. Especially when he was around you or Donghyuck, his favorite hobby was teasing the two of you about your relationship. Now there wasn’t anything for him to tease you about anymore.

The meeting was declared to be over some time later, and everybody started trickling out of the room. You bowed to all of them as they left, picking up some stray cups, plates, and napkin to toss into the garbage can. Less of a mess for the cleaning staff. There were some extra sandwiches left on a platter, and you figured that you could offer them to any other staff members left that you saw. No point in throwing them all out. Wiping some crumbs off a table, you were startled to see that there was still someone in the room with you.

“Oh! Yuta! You scared the crap out of me,” You chuckled, feeling comfortable enough now that everyone was gone to greet him informally. “I thought that you had gone back to your hotel with Director Moon.”

“I wanted to stay and talk to my friend who is overworking herself, as always.” He stepped closer to take the napkin from your hand and gently toss it into the trash.

“It’s inconsiderate to leave a mess for the cleaning staff.”

“You cleaned up the mess, at this point you’re just doing their job for them. Are you going to clean the urinals next?”

Your nose wrinkled up at his suggestion, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What are you doing after this?”

“I have a few loose ends in some paperwork to finish up at my desk.”

“And then?”

Chewing on your lip, you _knew_ what you would be doing at the end of all this. You’d be going home to an empty house and fresh pain in your constantly aching heart. This was just a distraction. One that was working _very well_ until Yuta had forced you to acknowledge that fact.

“What do you want, Yuta?”

He sighed, hands stuffed in his pants pockets as he looked out the windows at the darkening night sky, “For you to let yourself be happy.”

You let out a cynical chuckle at this, “Donghyuck told you everything, huh?”

“About your… mark, yeah.”

You shook your head, leaning back against the table to cross your arms over your chest.

“Y/N, you need to let him go. What I saw tonight, Yukhei clearly cares for you, he’s who—”

“Stop.” You growled coldly. “I don’t want Yukhei.”

Your friend sighed, resting his hand on top of your hair to gently pat your head a couple of times. You nearly leant into his touch, needing any kind of tactile affection at this point.

“But you do need him.”

And with that, he took his hand back and treaded lightly out of the room. You already missed the warm, brotherly presence he had brought, feeling cold and empty yet again. And reminded of Yukhei, yet again.

Nonetheless, you still had some paperwork to finish up. You were half-expecting to see Wong Yukhei around every corner, in the elevator, sitting in the chair by your desk. But he wasn’t. There was no sign of him. Maybe you could finally find some kind of peace in your workplace now.

You had only a couple more pages to get through when your boss called your name out in surprise, “Ms. Y/L/N, what are you still doing here?”

“Finishing paperwork. I’ll be done in less than half an hour, Director Jo.” You informed her over your shoulder, pen lightly tapping against your desk next to the papers your eyes were glued to.

“You can finish that on Monday, Ms. Y/L/N.”

“Design needs it first thing on Monday, better to get it done and sent out tonight.”

“Just come in a little early on Monday, then.”

“I promise, twenty-minutes tops, and I’ll be out of here.”

“You’re going to get locked in by the cleaning staff if you stay any longer.”

Looking up at your boss, you could see the genuine concern across her features, a look that was oddly becoming more and more familiar to you. Maybe you really should take a break. Capping the pen, you set it down and clicked your desktop lamp off, “You’re right, Director Jo.”

“Go grab your jacket, I’ll ride down with you.” She offered, almost with a friendly smile, but you knew your boss better than that.

“I’ll be a couple minutes, I have files to save on my computer. You should be getting home to Vivi and Yeojin, right?” You cheekily mentioned her wife and two-year-old daughter, something that had a genuine smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Promise you’ll actually be leaving in two minutes, Ms. Y/L/N?”

“I promise, Director Jo. Go home, I’ll be fine.”

“Very well. Have a good weekend.”

“You too.”

You waved her off to the elevator before cracking your neck, feeling a yawn crawl up your throat. This time you actually did plan to go home in two minutes, but an odd number in the Budgeting paperwork you just happened to glance over caught your eye. Shit, shit, _shit_ , that did not look good. You fervently dialed the general line for the Budgeting Department, hoping that maybe Jisung had stayed late to catch up on filing, or someone was just as anal as you and had already caught it.

The line clicked as someone picked it up, voice sounding somewhat surprised and very tired as it said, “Uhm, hello? Budgeting Department, Assistant Director Wong speaking.”

You froze.

“Hello?” He mumbled after a few silent moments, and you realized that he must have finally read the caller ID when he said, “Ah, Y/N? Y/N, is that you?”

Mr. Wong sounded ten times more awake now, still repeating your name, “Y/N? Y/N, are you there? Is everything okay?”

Finally, you croaked out, “No.”

“I’ll see you in two.”

And he hung up.

You were reviewing the papers yet again when the elevator dinged open and the nearly exhausted form of Wong Yukhei came dashing off of it. Despite the bags under his eyes and the disheveled appearance of his clothes and hair, he seemed as alert and worried as ever as he rushed to your side.

“Y/N, what’s wrong?” His eyes scanned your face desperately, as if he could read your mind just like that.

Turning to face him, you held the paper out to him, “There’s something off with the numbers on the Nowon project.”

“Oh.”

Without another word, he grabbed Yeeun’s chair from behind you and pulled it up beside your desk, taking the paper from your hand. The two of you went over nearly the whole project again together, crunching and recrunching the numbers over and over again to see where the error could’ve possibly come from. You worked diligently, no words being exchanged between you unless absolutely necessary, too worried about losing focus as the sounds of keys clicking and pens scratching against paper filled the air. Some great amount of time later, right as you were about to either pass out on your calculator or make some sleep-deprived realization about the meaning of life, the man next to you sucked in a sharp breath of air, a distinct change from the easy breaths that had been synced with yours about ten minutes into the reevaluation.

“What?” You perked up a little bit, leaning over to look at his work. “Did you figure it out?”

“Yeah,” he held up his calculator, gesturing to the bottom where there a 0 button and a 00 button. “I accidentally hit the double zero button on my first round of calculations, instead of just the zero.”

“Oh my god!” You cried out in exasperation, pushing on his shoulder. “Are you kidding me? What a great Assistant Director of Budgeting you are, don’t even know how to work your own calculator.”

Your tired state had taken most of the teasing out of your tone, but he thankfully still understood, “Guess I should just do it in my head next time, huh?”

“Oh yeah, that’ll end great.” You snorted, finally able to lean back in your chair and relax. A giggle bubbled up inside you, spilling over as you took in Yukhei’s absolutely exhausted state, one that you were sure you mirrored.

“What’s so funny? Or are you still laughing at my ineptness with a calculator?”

“Look at all this,” Gesturing around wildly to the massive amounts of scrap paper you’d used, you then pointed to the completely pitch-black sky outside and the clock that read nearly midnight, “We’ve basically killed our brains and sleep cycles for a couple extra zeroes. We could’ve done this on Monday, maybe come in like, an hour early. But nah, we stayed like… two hours after work in the first place, then three more to do all this crap about seven times over. We’re actually insane, you realize that, right? We are clinically insane, Wong Yukhei. You and me. Fuckin’ crazy.”

Yukhei chuckled at your loud and long ramble, running a hand through his hair, “Yeah, we are.”

There was a beat of near silence as you still had a couple short bursts of air coming from your mouth, something akin to sleepy laughter. Your eyes hadn’t quite left Yukhei’s face, and you weren’t sure what you were looking for. His locked with yours, creating a mounting tension in the air that soon became too much, resulting in you blurting out,

“I hope the cleaning crew didn’t lock us in!” _“Stay the night at my place, Y/N.”_

At the same time that Yukhei said _that._

Your blood ran cold, all semblances of the light humor and near euphoria you felt completely dissipating from your system. You couldn’t stop yourself from spitting out, “Why? You think I’ll finally believe your soulmate bullshit and fuck you if I’m already in your house?”

“No, because I’m worried about you.” He was quick to reply, sounding as caring and genuine as ever.

“I’m not going to slit my wrists or something if I go home alone, promise.”

Yukhei ignored your statement, instead still gently continuing on with his request, “I have a spare room, you would be on the opposite end of the house from me. You wouldn’t have to talk to me, use the same TV as me, or even see my face once we got there.”

“Then what’s the point of me being there?”

He shrugged.

And for some reason, something in you made you nod your head in a shaky acceptance.

“Let’s go get you an overnight bag from your place, then.”

You shook your head feverishly. No way could you make yourself go back in there, where all the memories of your greatest love were. Especially not with Yukhei.

“Alright, you can borrow something of mine, if you’d like.”

* * *

Yukhei’s house was bigger than you thought it’d be. It was definitely much, much bigger than your own apartment, with more than one bedroom and a quite noticeable walk from one side of the house to the other. If you thought that your little apartment felt empty with one, you could imagine how lonely it’d be living in such a large place like this alone. Which Yukhei did, you realized.

When he set his own bag down in the foyer-type room that you’d entered into, you did as well. And when he took his shoes off and set them on a rack right beside the table with your bags, you did as well. After all, you still had your manners.

The two of you had been silent for almost the whole trip. The only time you really spoke was when you thanked him for opening the passenger door of his car for you, and for holding his front door open. He didn’t try to force you to talk, thankfully, acknowledging how awkward and uncomfortable to situation was for you.

“Do you want something to eat, or drink? Or do you want to get changed first? Or take a shower? Or uh…”

“A shower, and some new clothes would be nice.” You requested quietly, shifting your weight anxiously from leg to leg.

He had a relieved smile on his face just from your one sentence, “Okay, I’ll go get you some clothes.”

You were left to look around the main living space you had stopped in. It was an open floor plan between the kitchen and living room, a breakfast bar being to only thing dividing the two spaces. The countertops all had a white and grey marble with the occasional maroon fleck within it, matching the white and grey stools, and the reddish backsplash behind the stove. A single pan was in the sink, crusted with what you guessed was his latest attempt at learning a new recipe. The couch beside you was a deep maroon as well, atop a white rug that you couldn’t imagine trying to keep clean. There were two couches in fact, as well as a sizeable ottoman and reclining armchair.

Yukhei returned to your vision, emerging from the hallway containing several doors, one of which was presumably the master bedroom. In his hands was a stack of neatly folded clothes that he offered out to you. You accepted them, thanking him quietly again.

“Uh, the guest bedroom and bathroom are down that hallway,” Yukhei pointed behind you, and you followed his gaze as he added, “Bathroom is second on the left, bedroom is at the end. The first door is a closet with extra towels and linens, in case you need them. There’s a TV in the bedroom, or you can use the one out here as well, I’ve got one in my room. And, I can make something to eat while you shower, if you want.”

You guessed that the other half of all those offers were something close to _‘so you don’t have to see me.’_ His polite consideration of all your previous (less than polite) rejections of his company only made your unwarranted hatred of him lessen even more.

“Do you know how to make pancakes?”

“You want pancakes?” He confirmed your statement, glancing at the time again.

Nodding, you added, “I’ve been having Chenle’s miso soup for every meal for the past few days, I miss real breakfast foods.”

Without requesting further explanation, he nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah, I can make some pancakes for you.”

“And, do you like dramas?”

His head tilted a little in confusion, clearly not understanding why you were asking him this, “Generally, yeah. Why?”

“I’m a few episodes behind on Stranger.” You referenced the crime drama you had started watching with Donghyuck, who would constantly nerd out over every episode whenever it had any direct reference to crime scene investigation. You hadn’t watched any episodes since you’d broken up, despite one airing every week. Now you figured that you would be able to watch it, but you didn’t want to watch it alone.

“I can set up the video-streaming for you.”

“No, I—” You stuttered over your thoughts for a moment, almost becoming frustrated at how kind he was and ready to dismiss himself from your presence. “I want to watch it… with you.”

Yukhei’s mouth formed a silent ‘oh’ as he seemed to take a moment to process the fact that you were now genuinely requesting to spend time with him. And then the brightest grin you’d ever seen spread across his mouth, his whole face lighting up, “Okay! Yeah, we can do that.”

You had your own small smile coming to your lips, his was much too contagious, “Thank you, Yukhei.”

And you could’ve sworn that he looked at you as if you’d given him the present of a lifetime when you said his first name, he couldn’t even respond, his grin increasing in magnitude.

“I’ll be out in a little bit.” You informed him, turning to retreat into the guest bathroom without another word from either of you.

The shower you took this time wasn’t scalding, just a mellow warmth that relaxed your muscles and ran down your body in soothing streams. The pleasant scent of coconut filled the steamy air from the shampoo and conditioner left out for you. You used a washcloth to gently wipe off your makeup and clean your face a little bit, even without your normal facial cleanser. Drying off your body with one towel and your hair with another, you inspected the stack of clothes he’d given you. There was a hoodie that you were sure would reach your knees, sweatpants with legs longer than your lifespan that you most definitely couldn’t cuff the ends up to something remotely close to your size, and thankfully a pair of shorts that would probably be more manageable. Yukhei’s house was the perfect temperature to wear the shorts that probably weren’t meant to go past your knees, as well as the hoodie that easily dwarfed your form and reached almost to your knees. At least they were comfy as hell.

Treading back out to the kitchen and living room area with damp hair pulled away from your face, and the new clothes loosely hanging off your form, you were greeted with a plate of pancakes and glass of ice water already at the breakfast bar, with Yukhei still attending to the stove. His broad back was to you, t-shirt draped perfectly across it, and grey sweatpants on that actually fit him. You quietly sat in one of the stools, hands resting in your lap as you waited for him to get his own plate made up and join you.

He was humming when you first walked out of the bathroom, but now he was full-on singing to some song you didn’t know, on account of the fact that it was in Mandarin. You tried to stifle your giggle at his slightly off-key serenading, but he’d apparently heard you. Yukhei whipped around, startled expression immediately lighting up when he saw you, “Oh hey! You can go ahead and start, it’ll be a couple more minutes until mine are done.”

“I’ll wait.” You replied, gracefully stepping off the stool to leave the kitchen for a moment.

Digging through your bag in the foyer, you retrieved your phone before returning to your stool. As Yukhei continued making his pancakes, you scrolled mindlessly on your phone, only vaguely aware of the time. It was already one in the morning. But at least tomorrow—or today, really—was a Saturday.

He joined you a few minutes later, seeming confused as to where to sit at first. There were three chairs, and you had plopped yourself into the center one. You weren’t sure what his conflict exactly was, but he eventually settled on the one to your left, starting your quiet meal.

After a few bites, you spoke up, “You can afford this being an Assistant Director?”

You were mostly curious because you hadn’t gotten a paycheck since your promotion and were wondering if you’d really be making this much now. And also, it was something to talk about that didn’t feel uncomfortable to you, or him, you hoped.

“No, actually.” Yukhei answered, seeming happy to talk about _anything_ with you. “I could afford this at my last job, I’ll probably have to downsize at some point in the future.”

“Well then why did you leave?”

“I heard about this job opening and had a really good feeling about it.”

With that sentiment, you were quiet again, continuing to chew thoughtfully on your pancakes. You were finished only a few minutes later, not as hungry as you thought you’d be. Yukhei bussed your plates without prompting, gesturing towards the living room as he washed the syrup off his own plate. The right side of the central couch seemed to have been the most frequently used, as there was a Yukhei-sized dent in the cushions. Not wanting to take his usual spot, you tucked your legs underneath yourself as you sunk into the middle cushions. If his couch was this comfy, you couldn’t imagine how heavenly the mattresses must be.

A blanket was draped across the back of the couch, and you wasted no time in covering your somewhat bare legs with it. When Yukhei walked into the room and saw you comfortably waiting for him, that familiar, ecstatic smile came back to his features. Were you just… existing really that wonderful to him?

Again, he seemed conflicted about where to sit, but your lifting up the blanket on the side of the couch with his hole in it pretty much made the decision for him. He gratefully slipped underneath it, grabbing the remote from the side table. You were careful to leave some space between you, hesitation and fear still running wild through your veins.

“You said Stranger, right?” Yukhei confirmed as he loaded up whatever streaming service he had. Honestly, judging by the looks of his house, he probably had all of them.

“Yeah. I think I’m three or four episodes behind? Honestly, I’m not sure. It might be five at this point.”

“Tell me if this is familiar, then.”

After some trial-and-error, you finally found the first episode you had missed, and he pressed play. Seeing the familiar title sequence hurt you a little bit, and within the first few minutes, despite your intense focus on the plot, even just the word ‘evidence’ brought a pang to your heart. You really were pathetic.

With a sigh, you pushed yourself further back into the cushions, crossing your arms tensely. As you kept watching, you realized that you didn’t really like this show as much as you thought you did. You found the plot and characters just angering you as the episode progressed. It wasn’t even fifteen minutes in when you finally let out a muffled screech at something the prosecutor said.

“Everything okay?” Yukhei asked, turning his gaze from the screen to you.

“Can we watch something else?” You mumbled, fingers clumsily trying to wipe at the unwilling tears that had wet underneath your eyes.

“You said that you wanted—”

“I know. Please, something else. You pick.”

“Okay,” He agreed quietly, looking back to the TV again as he exited out of Stranger.

You found yourself still unsatisfied as he continued searching through the programs, an overwhelming sense of something being _off_ permeating your every moment. As if you were somehow incomplete, or incorrect in your current state of being. Shifting under the blanket, you took Yukhei’s arm that was holding the remote and lifted it up, nonchalantly tucking yourself underneath it and into his side. The cursor on-screen froze as soon as you’d touched him and didn’t move again until you’d finally settled into your new position. It was cozy, and surprisingly… right.

Yukhei finally chose something to watch, settling back into the couch with you still nestled into his side. The two of you were quiet, neither of you commenting on the shift of position. You didn’t feel the need to, not quite sure of the reason why yourself. And Yukhei was probably afraid that he’d scare you off if he mentioned it. So you watched his movie choice in silence, focus fading in and out periodically as you struggled to stay awake. Just how fucking tired you were finally hit you, encouraging yawns to try to escape your mouth. You stifled them behind your hand, but when one had finally slipped by your vigilance, he picked the remote up again to pause the movie.

“Do you want to go to sleep? You don’t have to stay up and finish this with me.” He reminded you, and you could feel his chest vibrate against you as he spoke in lowly and softly.

“I want to stay out here with you.” Your small confession might have been a result of your sleep-deprivation. That didn’t make it any less truthful, you just weren’t nearly as embarrassed in your current state as you would’ve been if you had said the same thing while you were wide awake.

“Okay,” Yukhei replied quietly, readjusting the blanket across you two and hesitantly leaning his head atop of yours. When you didn’t immediately recoil away in disgust, he must have taken this as a good sign. He set the remote back down and once again turned his attention back to the movie.

The movie ended soon after, and Yukhei immediately went to try to find another one, but you stopped his hand as he scrolled yet again. According to the clock on his TV, it was well past three in the morning, almost hitting four. This was the latest you’d stayed up in a while, you realized. And so did your body, as your eyelids felt weighted and sticky, every blink was lasting longer and was harder to end than the last.

“Yes?” Yukhei looked at you attentively, waiting for you to explain why you had grabbed his arm.

“Can we just, I don’t know… talk?”

“Sure, yeah.” He set the remote down, leaving the TV on to provide a hazy light for the two of you to be able to see a little bit. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Where are you from?”

“Hong Kong.”

“Tell me about Hong Kong, then.”

Yukhei did most of the talking as he described his childhood home. His low, soft tones combined with the gentle pressure of his arm around your shoulders and his warm body pressed against yours were soon lulling you into a half-sleep. You didn’t try to protest it this time, willingly succumbing to the much-needed sleep.

* * *

In the morning, you found that you were still on the couch. Guess you wouldn’t be finding out how heavenly the beds really were. But unlike your own couch or any couches you’d slept on in your life, you didn’t wake up with a pain in your neck or back. It was the best sleep you’d had since Donghyuck had left you.

Yukhei wasn’t with you anymore, and you found yourself actually missing him as you sat up. Pulling the blanket tighter around yourself, you stood up and peered around to see if he was anywhere nearby. The familiar brown poof of hair was once again at the stove. You shuffled over to the breakfast bar again, plopping yourself down in a seat with a small huff.

Narrowing your eyes to read the time, you saw that it was a little after noon, meaning that you hadn’t slept as much as you felt like you did.

“Morning!” Yukhei greeted you brightly, his own voice thick and hoarse as if he’d just woken up as well. “Did you sleep okay? I didn’t want to try moving you from the couch, because you looked like you really needed the sleep. So I just went to my bedroom after I realized that you were asleep.”

The revelation that he hadn’t stayed out on the couch with you made the corner of your mouth quirk up a little. Even after you’d been the one to initiate the cuddling last night, he still felt that he should’ve left you alone once you fell asleep. Nodding, you rested your elbow on the counter and your chin in your palm, watching him as he continued cooking.

“What are you making now?”

Yukhei tilted the pan to show you, and you burst out laughing.

“Pancakes again?” You asked through your giggles, appreciating how the corners of his eyes crinkled when he chuckled at himself as well.

“It’s the only breakfast food I know how to make.”

“Eggs?”

“Only scrambled.”

“I’ll teach you some time.” Your mouth had offered before your brain was aware of the implications behind it. “Sunnyside up is gonna blow your mind.”

He had definitely caught onto the insinuation of your words immediately, grin only deepening across his features, “Kun’s tried about a million times, but maybe the million and first time will work.”

When he’d finished the second round of pancakes and had plated them for the both of you, he joined you at the breakfast bar again. This time you two weren’t silent though, talking and chatting as if you were good friends. You weren’t sure how or when, but the alarms that were usually constantly blaring in your head whenever you thought of or interacted with Yukhei, were quiet. Something in you had changed. And that terrified you, but also excited you.

“Do you think we could do this again?” Yukhei blurted out in a rare lull in conversation while both of you had food in your mouths. “You know, just us, hanging out? Not even a date, just… spending time with each other?”

You answered with no hesitation, “Yeah, I think we can.”

* * *

“Hey, you two lovebirds want to join us for dinner tonight?” Mark called after you and Yukhei as you two walked towards the front doors of the building, hand-in-hand.

Behind you were most of your office friends and acquaintances—Renjun, Yeeun, Mark, Chenle, Jisung, Jungwoo, and Jaemin—all looking at you two eagerly for your answer. Without even confirming with your boyfriend, you replied, “Sorry, we have plans. Another night, okay?”

“Ugh, you two are disgusting.” Renjun complained, only making your eyebrow quirk up in confusion.

“We’re disgusting… for having plans ahead of time?”

“We all know what ‘having plans’ is a codeword for.”

Yukhei chuckled at your friend’s insinuation while you merely snorted out something akin to laugh as you replied, “Renjun, _you’re_ disgusting. We’ll see you guys on Monday.”

With that, you left the office building, emerging onto the busy sidewalks, thoughts only on your plans for tonight. You were moving in with Yukhei. He had helped you with selling and repurposing most of your big furniture and belongings that you wouldn’t need when you would permanently start living in his condo with him. But tonight you were going to be getting your clothes and more personal belongings. And you knew that you needed to do this by yourself. You couldn’t bring Yukhei along for what you were expecting to be your last time in your old apartment.

“Are you sure you don’t want some help? Aren’t you going to have a bunch of suitcases or something?” Yukhei questioned once you had gotten home and started slipping your shoes on by the front door of your soon-to-be new home. In all honesty, you’d already taken to calling it home, a small detail that your boyfriend never failed to pick up on, a barely-there smile coming to his face whenever you did.

“We cleared out all the big stuff. It’ll be just a couple bags. I’ll be fine, Yuk.” You assured him, standing up straight and then onto your tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek, the action only bringing a small smile to his face. “I need to do this by myself, okay?”

He nodded solemnly, “Yeah.”

Yukhei kissed you, this time a sweet and prolonged one to your lips, one that made you smile against his mouth. His hand lightly rested on your hip as he in turn went to try to deepen the kiss. You didn’t protest, nearly humming in content as your mouths meshed against each other in a nearly heavenly manner. 

Yukhei’s kisses always had something absolutely intoxicating about them, as if you could get drunk on them and stay that way for the rest of your life, living off just the feeling of ecstasy that was kissing him. Despite having a firmness to them, there was always the unspoken rule that you could stop any time you wanted if you ever felt uncomfortable or uncertain. You hadn’t felt either of those since after your third “not-date,” the uncomfortable and uncertain first kiss happening while you were watching fireworks. 

It was always the kisses that kept you here, that kept you from doubting the warm feeling flowing through you and penning a euphoric soliloquy in your veins. Your whole body and mind responded to him, just as his did to you. Even just the feel of your fingertips gently gracing his cheeks as you kissed him excited goosebumps underneath your touch.

You finally ended the eager and escalating kiss. After all, you had a mission for tonight.

With blown-out pupils, and through his now slightly swollen lips, he gently reminded you, “Let me know if you need anything, baby.”

“I will, Yuk.”

When your hand had settled around the door handle, he called out from behind you, “I love you.”

You still hadn’t said it back to him. It had been months since you’d finally accepted that you were supposed to be with him, that he might be your soulmate. Yukhei had been saying those three words since the very beginning, but you’d hesitated in repeating them back. You knew that every time he said them, he hoped that would be the time you finally said it. But you still couldn’t bring yourself to say it. Something in you was still holding on to what you had in the past, and another something was terribly afraid that it would just be a repeat of that. So you kept those three words locked up right within you.

“See you in a bit, Yuk.”

Finally, you turned the handle and left your house.

* * *

The green door.

This would be the last time you opened this door.

The memory of your argument with Donghyuck over what color to paint it flashed in your mind momentarily. A bittersweet smile was just as fleeting across your lips.

Further into the apartment, your eyes were drawn to the white patch on the wall where the dent in the wall from your phone had been fixed. A pang came to your heart as you remembered that morning.

The shelves were mostly barren, kitchen cleared out a long time ago, and bathroom as empty as when you’d moved in. Everything that was visible to any house guest was cleared and made impersonal. But when you came clearing stuff out with Yukhei, you forbade him from coming into the bedroom with you. Too much was in there for you to even consider letting him in with you. It was for you to deal with, on your own. He had supported you in every other aspect of your life since you’d finally accepted him as your soulmate, you could do this alone now. You _had_ to.

The first thing you looked at was the nightstand on Donghyuck’s side of the bed. His pastel yellow alarm clock was still there, 12:00 flashing steadily across its screen. You gently grabbed the cord and unplugged it from the outlet. Some things weren’t quite the way you had left it. When you didn’t continue your lease, you’d texted Jeno to let him know when Donghyuck could come by to grab anything else he wanted. You made sure to be at Yukhei’s then. But you didn’t think that he would have left this, he always said it was his favorite thing you’d given him—aside from your love. That was a rare cheesy moment for him.

Maybe you could sell this for a similar price to the one you’d bought it at. Not lose too much money. After all, it still worked.

Setting it on the floor beside the bed, you worked to strip the bed of all the linens, including the horrible orange-and-navy blue comforter Donghyuck had insisted on. His inability to understand aesthetics of colors still boggled your mind.

Why didn’t he take this either?

After you folded those all up and placed them on the bare mattress, you placed the alarm clock beside them as well.

The furniture might be an issue, you couldn’t get that out of here by yourself. Calling Yukhei was feasible, but at the same time unimaginable. A moving service would suffice.

Opening one of the two bags you’d brought with you, you started on emptying out the few articles of clothing you still had left in your closet and drawers. The black dress you had to wear for Public Speaking in college, horrible slacks your aunt had gotten you as a congratulations on your new job at N-City, and the only cocktail party dress you owned were mercilessly stuffed into the bag. Even as an Assistant Director, you found that your normal work attire sufficed at every event you’d been invited to so far. Except Yukhei’s old boss’ daughter was getting married next month, and you were to be tagging along as his date. You should really invest in another fancy dress.

In your top drawer, you carelessly tossed your dozens of pairs of socks and old underwear in beside the dresses and slacks. Next were your old ratty t-shirts you hadn’t bothered bringing to Yukhei’s house because you took his all the time. The bottom drawer used to hold your sweatpants and jeans, except the latter had been transferred to your new dresser half in your new home, the former now being stuffed in as well. The other side was Donghyuck’s, but you figured that you might as well check those drawers, for when you sold it later. How embarrassing it’d be to sell a piece of furniture only for the buyer to open it and find his old boxers or something.

A chuckle left your mouth when you opened it. You still knew him too well. The drawer was still filled with his underwear. Did he really not think to grab these? With a shrug, you grabbed the other bag to put his clothes into. You could always donate them for a tax write-off.

On your second handful of undies, your fingers contacted with something much harder than the contents should had been. Curious and mildly concerned, you extracted the foreign object from its cave of boxers. The small velvet box delicately held between your fingertips snapped the breath out of your body and blanked your mind for a second. Was it really?

You counted three breaths,

in, out, one

in, out, two

in, out, three,

then popped the lid open.

Inside was really the only thing you could’ve imagined it being, a ring. A rather familiar ring, at that.

The first time you’d seen it was eight months ago, when you visited Donghyuck’s family at Christmas. Your boyfriend at the time was in the kitchen “helping” his mother and aunts with the food. He was mainly just filching off morsels here and there, not much of an actual help. You were sitting on the back porch, your front being kept warm by the blazing fire in front of you, and your back being frozen off by the chilly December winds. His younger relatives and their dads were playing around in the snow in the backyard. You were pretty sure they were trying to play tag.

Your company on the porch was his great-grandfather, and elderly man who had already announced at the beginning of the gathering that this would be his last Christmas with the family. And it was.

His frail form was shrouded in blankets, but nothing really could have killed his strong and mischievous spirit. The cold, however, didn’t seem to be doing much to help his lungs. Almost every word would be punctuated with a hack or a cough, and you’d already offered multiple times to take him back inside. He refused every time.

“Y/N, I want to show you something.” He gestured for you to come closer.

You obliged, crouching in front of his wheelchair, eagerly waiting for him to continue. The man tugged his gloves off, revealing his shaking and clumsy hands before they reached into his jacket pocket. When he brought it back out, there was a ring slid halfway down one of his fingers.

“Here,” his hand offered it out for you, and once you did, he slipped the gloves back on to control the freezing temperatures he had to endure just in those few seconds.

Your own hands were gloved, and you gently set the jewelry into your palm before carefully observing it. The band was silver with intricate filigree weaving its way around, leading up to where the settings for two equally-sized stones had been put in. Only one was actually in there, a dazzling stone that shifted from blue to green to purple throughout. The other setting was empty, which you peered curiously at.

“This was my wife’s wedding ring. One stone is my birthstone, alexandrite. The other one was garnet, hers. I had the garnet buried with her, twelve years ago.”

“It’s beautiful,” you murmured in awe, eyes scanning the lines of the filigree closely.

“Donghyuck’s birthstone is alexandrite too.”

“I thought June was pearl.”

“That’s not a gem, that’s a clam’s gallstone.”

You snorted at his counter, laughter soon following.

“Anyway,” he continued on, humor across his bundled-up features too. “It’s for you.”

Your jaw dropped. Stuttering, you tried to hand it back to him, “I-I could never—”

The elderly man plucked it from your grasp before dropping it back into his pocket, “Not now. _Now_ I’m actually giving it Donghyuck. _You’ll_ get it whenever that kid finally proposes to you.”

As the memory faded back away, your eyes were caught on the one change the ring had undergone: the other setting had been filled. With your birthstone.

Realization struck you like a lead train, knocking your breath from you and stumbling you back onto the mattress. Your hand shot up to your mouth as a crushing weight was against your chest. Letting a tiny wail escape your mouth, you then took a deep and shaky breath in through your fingers. Donghyuck was going to propose to you.

And then every single memory and thought and feeling you’d ever had of or about Lee Donghyuck came flooding down on you. You were drowning in your own past experiences of happiness, hilarity, confusion, angst, and unconfounding love. Ardent, unbending, beautiful, all-consuming _love_ filled your senses again. You cried. You cried more than you ever had, more than when your grandmother passed away, or when you’d broken your collarbone when you were fifteen, or when your childhood dog got hit by a car, or when Donghyuck had broken up with you.

That Christmas was his great-grandfather’s last Christmas, and he’d left the world a month later thinking that one day, you’d be wearing the same ring that _his_ wife had worn through their decades of love. As _Donghyuck’s_ wife.

But you didn’t have Donghyuck anymore, you had Yukhei. Being with Yukhei was great, but you realized right then that it was too easy. You’d spent your whole life avoiding easy, why would you settle for it now? You didn’t want the easy happiness that Yukhei brought you, you wanted the difficult and trying love that you had with Donghyuck.

You’d heard stories of people that were able to will away their tattoos, will away their connection to their soulmate; maybe you could do that too.

Was it fair to Yukhei? No, but you really didn’t care about him, you cared about Donghyuck.

Still with tears streaming down your eyes, you muted Yukhei’s contact in your phone. You weren’t going back there, and he’d start calling soon. But he also knew where you were, he’d eventually come looking. You couldn’t go to Yeeun’s house, or any of your colleague’s really, they all know Yukhei too. The only person that came to mind was Kim Namjoon, one of your friends that you’d met in college. He knew Donghyuck, but only through you. And since you hadn’t seen Namjoon since February, at a marketing company convention, he didn’t know about your breakup. Ironically, he had joined your rival company, Bangtan Marketing. Yukhei wasn’t in N-City yet at the convention, so he hadn’t met him yet either. Or, at least not in the context of being your boyfriend/soulmate.

* * *

Namjoon had welcomed you into his apartment that night with open—albeit confused—arms. The first few minutes of you being there were spent with just the two of you catching up, but you soon feigned a headache, and he lead you to his guest room. With the forced promise of letting him know if you need anything, he left you there, and you set to work.

Several somewhat-instructive YouTube videos, a glass of water, and about two hours later, you were pretty sure you had managed to make your mark a little lighter. Maybe. You couldn’t quite tell. With a groan, you restarted the video and kept trying.

* * *

“Who—? No,” he went to close the door as soon as it had been opened, but you managed to grab the edge of it before he could, wedging your leg in there to open it again.

You had stayed two nights at Namjoon’s, most moments focusing on ridding yourself of the mark, and typically filled with tears, either out of frustration or just memories and love for Donghyuck. Now after harassing Lee Jeno for several minutes for the address, here you were, on Donghyuck’s doorstep.

“Hyuck, please.” You pleaded strongly, your gaze unfaltering as you looked into his eyes.

One, two—

“Fine.”

Instead of inviting you in like you had hoped, Donghyuck joined you on the small welcome mat outside his new apartment. You were nervously wringing your hands as both of you waited for the other to say something. Finally, you broke.

“I was in the apartment the other night,” was how you decided to start off your pleading for him to take you back. “And uhm, uh. How were—how were you going to propose, to me?”

Donghyuck’s eyes widened almost comically. That was clearly not what he was expecting you to say. He shook his head almost to himself as he replied, “It doesn’t matter now, Y/N.”

“No, look!”

Pulling your sleeve up, you put your thumb on full display for him. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if he didn’t want the painful reminder that you had a soulmate out there who wasn’t him.

“Y/N, I don’t—”

“Look at it. Please, my love.”

He looked like he was physically in pain as he went to open his eyes again. You scanned his features earnestly as he looked over your thumb. Doing a double take, he finally touched you, rubbing at the skin where your mark had been the last time he’d seen it, as if he had thought you’d covered it with makeup to trick him or something. But nothing came off, it really was gone. Next, he grabbed your other hand, to double-check which thumb had it in the first place. But both were blank.

You took this as an opportunity to speak up, “I was able to… will it away. For you.”

“You’ll never be able to get it back now, Y/N. You won’t have a soulmate, for the rest of your life.” His voice low, dangerous, and suspicious as he spoke, still holding and looking over your hand in awe.

“I don’t want one. I want you.”

His eyes snapped up to yours immediately, clearly not believing his ears. You stammered out an addition, “If you—if you want me.”

Tears filled his eyes before his head ducked back down and he peppered kisses along your fingers, hand, and up to your wrist. “Of course I do,” he murmured against your skin.

You couldn’t help but cry now too, free hand shaking as it reached into your pocket, retrieving the small velvet box. Placing it in Donghyuck’s open hand, you asked again, “How… were you going to propose to me?”

His knuckles turned white as he took it into his grip, standing up straight, “At the lunch reservations I had tried surprising you with, I was going to tell you about a weekend getaway I had booked for us. It was to this cute little place in Jeju. You always said your favorite place we’d gone to was Jeju. I was going to do it there.”

Your heart crumbled as you came to the horrible conclusion that it was all your fault that it hadn’t happened.

“I’m sorry.”

He kissed you.

Finally, after months of starvation, you were being filled once again with the wonderful feeling that was Lee Donghyuck. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could compare to how you felt when you kissed him. It was sloppy, salty, desperate, clumsy, and the best kiss you’d ever had. Your hands roughly grasped at the sides of his cheeks while his couldn’t seem to stay still. At first, they were running along your back, then on your cheeks, then in your hair. It was as if he couldn’t believe that you were there, that you weren’t a figment of his imagination, that you hadn’t, in fact, left him forever. And you _were_. You _were_ there, you _were_ real, and you _were_ back to him.

When you finally pulled back from the kiss, you were the one sobbing profusely now, and he wiped at your cheeks with the sleeve of his sweater. Gentle coos came from his lips as your chest heaved and hiccuped along with your ebbing and flowing tidal waves of emotions. Everything hurt but was being healed, angst burned right alongside ardor, nerves were alight and asleep. You had Donghyuck again, and every atom that was a part of you buzzed with excitement and relief.

“Let’s go inside, honey.” He murmured quietly, opening his front door and ushering you in still with a comforting grip around your shoulders.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Donghyuck pressed a kiss to your temple, adding in a soft whisper, “Ding dong.”


End file.
